


Your Blue-eyed Boy

by MissAntlers



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: 1920s, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Angst, Ensemble Cast, Established Relationship, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 03:28:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 24,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2135349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAntlers/pseuds/MissAntlers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1922, Will Graham is framed for murder by the man he loves.</p><p>After his release, six years later, he finds himself struggling with old-world concepts of truth and justice in this new age of flamboyance and expression, as he seeks out Doctor Lecter to exact his revenge. He soon discovers, however, that his feelings are more than rose-tinted nostalgia, and that their romance hasn't been left entirely in the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The House Party

_he was a handsome man_

_and what I want to know is_

_how do you like your blueeyed boy_

_Mister Death_

– ‘Buffalo Bill’s’, e.e. cummings

**1922**

 

The night was crisp and tinged with the scent of citrus. Some of these houses must have orangeries, Will mused, as the car rolled through the affluent North Baltimore neighbourhood. That was good; it would mask the scent of sweat that hung heavy in the smothering air like last words.

He inspected himself as best he could in the few reflective inches of his cigarette case, his face distorted by the 'W.G.' engraving in the top right corner. It just made everything worse. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked the way his ears stuck out when he wore his hair like this, but Doctor Lecter had had slicked back the boy’s bouncy brown curls, insistent that they wouldn’t let him into the party looking like a dockyard worker.

_“But I was a dockyard worker,” Will said, frowning at the neatly shaved and perfumed creature who sat staring back at him through the looking glass._

_Hannibal cupped the boy’s face in his slender hands, tilting it upwards and leaving the throat exposed. “Not anymore.” His voice sounded as if it had been marinated in a thick, dark wine. “You’ve adapted. You have evolved, and tonight will be your becoming.”_

_Will blinked. His gaze shifted tentatively over Hannibal’s plush couch of a mouth, his conspicuous cheekbones, the crease on his pale brow––anywhere but his eyes._

_“What are you now?” Hannibal coaxed, his accent slurring his words and intonations like a glissando on a piano. Will felt the sting of his fingernails as they bit into the soft springy flesh under his jawbone._

_“I am immaculate,” he said, closing his eyes and leaning into the touch. “And I am yours.”_

* * *

**1928**

William Graham. The man who didn’t kill all those people. Little Prince. Lecter’s boy. Will.

He had had so many epithets; it was hard to decide whom to be this time. A shudder of reluctance accompanied the thought of assuming some of them again. Perhaps it was the end of an epoch. Perhaps he was old enough to become someone new.

Incarceration hadn’t lent itself to good grooming. He cut his hair, but kept the stubble. It made him look older, and he felt that was important. It would save him from a couple of those old titles. He wasn’t a child anymore.

His house in Wolf Trap had been sold off long ago. He heard it had fetched quite an impressive price––people could be so morbidly obsessed. Instead, he found himself an apartment in Baltimore’s central district, and it almost didn’t matter that the ceiling leaked and that he could hear things skittering across the floorboards at night. It was the kind of place that was difficult to get off you, but it wasn’t a little grey room in Baltimore State Lunatic Hospital. For that fact alone, he was prepared to submit to anything. Submission had always been a talent of his, after all.

* * *

Matthew Brown came to visit him on Tuesdays. Will was quite certain that the hospital didn’t send him, but he never asked. Matthew had lots of ideas about things and he talked often, although never actually managed to say very much at all. It reminded Will of his own wild mind, making quick-fire jumps to places he couldn’t explain. He missed that. There wasn’t much call for it anymore.

“What are you thinking about?” Matthew asked him one drizzly Tuesday. They were sitting on the floor by the little window, taking it in turns to swig from Matthew’s unlabelled bottle of bathtub gin. They watched the rain blur the world outside as if a child had painted it with their fingers. Will considered that that was possibly how it really was.

“Prohibition,” he said. “I imagined they might be done with it by the time I got out.”

“You were only inside for six years,” Matthew observed, handing over the bottle.

Will could taste the other man’s mouth on the rim. He was unsure as to how he felt about that, but he drank nevertheless. Everything seemed more tranquil with intoxication––his mind didn’t jump quite so vividly.

“What about you, what were you thinking about?” It seemed only polite to return the question, even though Will wasn’t particularly interested in the answer. At least it would get Matthew talking, and then he could simply slip out of conversation altogether, lulled by the orderly's dirty Boston twang.

“I was thinking about you, Mr Graham.” He turned so that his upper body faced Will, and leaned in towards him. “A man of your capabilities shouldn’t spend the rest of his life sipping moonshine in a damp apartment.”

His voice was husky and his lips were pink, but Will didn’t like the way he smelled of hospital cleaning products. He really hoped Matthew wasn’t going to ask him to run away with him again. Sometimes he considered taking him up on it, but it simply would not be fair.

It had been six years, but time was merely a placebo. It had been put there to placate him, to absently assure him that all would right itself eventually. But it had not, and he had not healed. Sometimes he thought he could remember being loved, and loving in return, like a word on the tip of his tongue, but the sensation always dissipated before he could sense any familiarity. Nothing felt familiar anymore, but at least it was real.

“You are a hawk,” Matthew continued, “and would that he had only clipped your wings, but Hannibal Lecter tore out all the plumage and left you mere flesh and bones. You can’t let him get away with this, Mr Graham.”

Will sighed and raked a hand through his sweat-mussed hair. He missed his curls. “What are you proposing, Brown?”

Matthew leaned back and raised the bottle to his lips. “Revenge.” He grinned. “Revenge, Mr Graham––what else?”

* * *

**1922**

The engine whined like it had more to say, but the driver killed it. Will looked up at the large house outside of which they had come to a stop. Its bay windows and fat porch pillars gave it a plantation-era air, but this was a new neighbourhood, designed to give the city a new face. Its old lace elegance seemed juxtaposed against the stark minimalism that high society was so porous to nowadays. It was out of place, and so he warmed to it.

All the ground floor lights were on, and as the guests, chattering in packs or merely stalking alone, past in front of the windows, it made it seem as if the house was shifting, swaying in time to the soft ripple of a jazz flute. Lanterns hung around the necks of trees out on the lawn. Their light left distorted golden stains on the white curves of the pillars.

Laughter and talk spilled over from the party and into the car like so many clinking coins.

People.

Lord, there were far more than he had anticipated. Will made a fist in his slacks, crumpling the material and leaving it a metropolis of troughs and peaks in the wake of his anxious fingers. He felt his breath leaving him like he had been punctured.

“You’ll be all right, Mr Graham.”

The boy tore himself away from the swarming guests and the hive of the house. His driver was twisted round in the front seat, smiling at him through the spangled darkness. The lanterns caught his eyes and made them glisten like black pearls.

“Thank you, Barney.” Will felt his lips pull back and the air tackle his exposed teeth. It wasn’t really a smile at all, but at least it was an expression.

Nevertheless, it would be best if he expressed as little as possible tonight––except where the assignment was concerned.

He filled his lungs with as much of the oxygen stagnating in the car as possible, tossed Doctor Lecter’s silk scarf around his throat, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. There was a heavy bass on whichever record was playing in the party, and he used it to measure his steps up the garden path, swaying his hips a little in time to the tune. The novel medley of flutes and cornets and drums was writ on the night like a poem, and he intended to be the closing lines.


	2. The Cigarette Case

**1928**

 

Will often wondered what had become of the cigarette case. It had been impounded as evidence, but whilst the rest of his surviving possessions trickled back into his little apartment, the cigarette case had not returned. His mind sometimes had a whim to tease him with the idea that Doctor Lecter might have it; he refused to allow this to form as an official thought. The notion that Hannibal might have kept something of his tore open the sutures that Will had mentally stitched in order to keep the pieces of his heart together. Six years gone to waste.

Matthew had made enquiries, even though Will had never asked him to. Perhaps Matthew could tell he was distressed by the lack of it. Will appreciated that. Yet the cigarette case remained elusive, and eventually it was decided to enlist outside assistance. It felt good to have a goal that he could potentially reach.

 

* * *

 

**1922**

The guests in the hallway buzzed and whirred, like insects in a host, or gears in a machine. Will was yet to decide which. Did Hannibal see them as useful or as signs of decay? Possibly both.

No, there wasn’t time to think about that. His mind was leaping because it was nervous, but he had to settle down. He had a job to do.

_“I don’t see why you can’t simply break in and kill him then.” Will propped his head up on his elbows and doused his features in a mock scowl. “You’ve done it before.”_

_Hannibal caught his eye in the mirror and held it for a moment, before returning his attention to the remaining vacant buttonholes on his shirt. “Mason Verger recently inherited an empire built on abattoirs. It is unfortunate, but he is as wealthy as he is debauched, and I am afraid that even I would find it difficult flitting into his fortress undetected.”_

_Will groaned and rolled onto his back, delighting in the cool of the cotton bed sheets against his bare skin. “And it has to be me, does it?”_

_“I’m afraid so.” Hannibal didn’t look afraid. He was smiling with one side of his mouth as he retrieved his tie from where Will had thrown it earlier, crumpled and serpentine. “Verger never approved of my sessions with his sister. He would never knowingly let me into his home, and that really is the best place to kill him. People are always easier to kill in their own homes. They believe themselves safe, and they let down their guard.” Finished with the tie, Hannibal seated himself on the end of the bed, looking down at Will from under hooded eyelids. “Besides, little prince––I am somewhat old for Verger’s taste. You will do it better than I.” He fingered the hair curling at Will’s temples, and the boy shut his eyes and nuzzled against his hand. “You are utterly Pre-Raphaelite, William. Here, I have something for you.”_

_“Is it part of my costume for tonight?”_

_Hannibal’s lips crawled up at the corners. “In a sense.” He brought forth a small flat rectangle, which flashed brilliantly under the yellow electric light._

_Will peered at it. “I’ve seen those before. Some of the gentlemen at the docks kept their cigarettes in them.”_

_“Well, tonight you are to be a gentleman, William.” Hannibal leaned down and pressed a kiss to Will’s forehead. He left the case in Will’s hands._

_The boy turned it over and smiled. “You engraved it,” he said._

*** * ***

**1928**

“Is this really about a cigarette case?” Jack Crawford set his black felt fedora down on Will’s little coffee table. It sat between the two of them like an ink stain on a crisp manuscript; a sharp reminder of the distance the esteemed private investigator wished to keep.

“Everybody seems to be wearing those nowadays,” Will said, eyeing the hat.

Jack narrowed his eyes and smiled. “Don’t change the subject.”

Will leaned back, his body folding into his chair as he let out a long breath. “This is really about a cigarette case, yes.”

Jack folded his arms. “So I’m not going to suddenly find myself poking around in a certain psychiatrist’s private business, am I?”

Will didn’t move. As Jack spoke, an infantry of low grey clouds marched fiercely over the watery autumn eye of the sun, and the apartment grew suddenly darker. When Will glanced about, the shadows of the room seemed instantly so much deeper, as if they had more to conceal. Perhaps they sensed Jack’s presence.

“William Graham.” The P.I. shut his eyes and rubbed at his receding hairline. “I helped you prove you were an innocent man, but that does not mean I subscribe to your assertions that Hannibal Lecter is the Chesapeake Ripper.” He looked down at his hands and Will looked too. His sturdy brown fingers were splayed about as if discarded, or without purpose. It made the cheap silver band around his ring finger look almost gaudy. “I’ve worked hard all my life. I have done my best in a world that never really saw a place for a man of my background.” He looked up at Will. “You are my friend, Will Graham, but I took a risk helping you once before. Don’t make me throw away everything I’ve strived for because of your personal vendetta against Doctor Lecter.”

Will thought that perhaps now it was time for the clouds to pass, and for the sun to shine again, clear and without complication. But the room stayed dark. It was up to him to make change happen.

“I’d just like the cigarette case,” he said. “Please.” He had hoped his voice might emerge sounding meek and compliant, but instead it came out like grit under fingernails, or stones in the toes of shoes. “It meant something to me once.”

Jack’s shoulders sloped and his face relaxed, although he shook his head. “I don’t agree with what the way the two of you lived, you know.”

“I know.”

“But I do have some experience in being pre-judged because of factors beyond your means of changing.” He grunted a laugh. “All right, Mr Graham. I’ll take your case, but I’m off it as soon as I get a whiff of the good doctor, you understand me?”

Will nodded, and Jack retrieved the fedora.

At the door he turned and said, “Your apartment reeks of gin, Mr Graham. Tell your fella Brown that I’ll have to report him to the revenue agents next time. I’ve got to do something keep up my good name, after all.”

When he was gone, Will slumped against the door and sank down onto the floorboards. Matthew was not _his fella_.

 

* * *

 

**1922**

 

Will put the cigarette to his mouth. It felt asleep between his lips, un-smoking and unlit. He closed his eyes, and it was as if he could see a pendulum swinging behind the lids, undoing time and taking him back to the sticky summers of his childhood. His father was hammering nails into the hull of a rowing boat. It was unfinished and looked almost skeletal. He spoke to Will in his New Orleans drawl that poured out of his mouth like smooth cream, and as the child came closer he was hit with the fist of the smell of cigar smoke.

He was sure he almost felt it. No, wait––

Will’s eyes sprang open, and a ribbon of grey smoke climbed into the air above him. It was then that he became aware of the young man standing opposite him, who touched their cigarettes tip to tip, until Will’s was glowing orange.

“Thank––thank you,” Will coughed.

Mason Verger smiled. “Don’t mention it, kid. I thought you could use a light.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided I may as well post Chapter 2 today, since I'll be away this weekend and shan't get much writing done.  
> Thank you for all the fab responses so far. Have a gander at my Tumblr for some accompanying artwork - flurgburgler.tumblr.com


	3. Mason Verger

**1922**

“You here alone?” Mason asked, leaning back against one of the hallway’s alabaster buttresses. He wore in a white linen suit, and Will noted the spots of the host’s private wine on his left lapel, blood-like and clumsy.

Good, he thought. An intoxicated Mason would be easier to convince.

Will nodded. He considered it almost ironic that Mason Verger looked so much like a child himself. He couldn’t have been much older than Will, yet his rounded face and mussed golden hair were practically cherubic. It was his eyes that betrayed him. They were not those of a child, or even of a man, Will thought. They witnessed spectacles not meant for human sight, and so they appeared pale, bleached––rinsed of all their horrors, so as not to give him away whilst in polite company.

Lord, how Will despised eyes. Something in his expression must have let it show, for now Mason was squinting at him.

“Is something wrong, Mr Verger?” he asked, taking a drag on his cigarette.

Mason breathed a cloud of smoke into his face and giggled as Will coughed. “Oh, you looked pretty like that. Actually, now I come to think of it, kid, you look kind of familiar.”

Will felt as his eyes running over him like the hands of a persistent lover, generating similar discomfort. It wouldn’t do to be given away so soon.

“You’re nearly done,” he said, gesturing to the smouldering stub still glowing between the other man’s plump pout. “Won’t you take one of mine?” He reached into his jacket for the cigarette case, but Mason said,

“I put a lot of things in my mouth, kid, but never another man’s cigarette.” He winked. “Papa always used to get his imported from India, and I really can’t smoke anything else.”

“I was sorry to hear about your father, Mr Verger."

“See, now you’re just lying to me.” Mason rolled his eyes and his brows creased together. “I can’t have that, I really can’t. You were doing so well.”

Panic swarmed through Will. It attacked his extremities first. It felt as if each of his fingers were becoming numb and useless, and then his wrists, and then his arms. It was not so much a fear of being discovered, but a fear of letting Hannibal down. Panic made him reckless.

“I do a lot of other things well,” he said. “If you’d rather.”

Mason leaned forwards, whisking the cigarette stub away and crushing it under the heel of his shoe without taking his eyes off Will for a moment. “Say that again.”

“Only if you take me home with you.” He took a step towards him and, grazing Mason’s cheek with his own, whispered into his ear, “Take me home with you. Right now.”

 

* * *

 

**1928**

“Look who I found skulking around in the alleyway down by the back stairs,” said Matthew, revealing a lithe young woman stood in the doorway behind him, her cheap clothes draped lavishly over her small, curvaceous frame. “To what do we owe the pleasure this time, Fredricka?”

Will let out a long breath that became something of a hiss towards the end, but he nodded at her yieldingly nonetheless. “Hello, Miss Lounds.”

She returned the gesture, her features looking overly comfortable on her face. “You see, Mr Brown––Mr Graham has the courtesy to at least pretend to be a gentleman.”

Will had always thought she had a voice like Russian vodka––it went down smooth, but it had a kick at the end, and never failed to leave a bitter taste on the palate.

“You say that like being a gentleman’s a good thing,” Matthew said, coming to sit beside Will on the couch.

“Isn’t it?” Freddie smiled, but the action never reached her eyes. They remained motionless, too preoccupied noting everything else.

“Everyone said Mason Verger was a gentleman.”

“Don’t.” Will glanced at Matthew, and the other man sighed and threw his hands up in the air.

“I need a drink. Who else wants one?” He got up and made for the kitchen. “Freddie, I assume you’ll be joining me. That’s half the reason you’re here, isn’t it?”

This time Freddie Lounds’ eyes took a moment to smirk. “You know me, Mr Brown.”

“Why _are_ you here?” Will interjected, getting to his feet. He ought to wash out some glasses for Matthew. He ought to do something to feel useful.

“Our last interview was cut short,” she said, taking a seat in the armchair opposite the couch. Jack Crawford had sat there only this morning. It reminded Will he had to speak to Matthew about the alcohol.

“You mean by his innocence?” Matthew muttered, offering Freddie a neat scotch.

“You’re a terrible man, Mr Brown.” She took a sip of her drink and closed her eyes, perhaps so that nobody noticed her smiling properly. “Lord, but don’t you have your uses.” She turned back to Will. “I still want to write about you, Mr Graham, but your friend is quite right. I am here because I require a new angle.”

Will didn’t want there to be a new angle. He didn’t want there to be a story at all. He would have been content to drink bathtub gin with Matthew every Tuesday until his liver gave out and his heart could not longer hold itself together. And yet, as much disdain as he had for Freddie’s obnoxious brand of journalism, he could not bring himself to let her down. She was just trying to make a space for herself in a world that believed it had no room for a female reporter. An exclusive story of the innocent boy accused of being a serial killer and a psychopath––now, that could carve her out a fine portion of world indeed. Maybe she could even turn it into a book, give up journalism altogether, become the next Virginia Woolf. She certainly had the spark for it, Will mused, but perhaps that was exactly why she wouldn’t let that happen. Freddie Lounds never gave anything up.

Will’s shoulders sagged, and the past itself may as well have been pressing down on them with firm, cold hands. “What were you thinking then, Miss Lounds?”

The corners of Freddie’s lips curled upwards with the same slow precision a serpent might employ as it coils around its prey, crushing the air out of it and breaking all the bones. “You may be innocent of murder, Mr Graham, but nevertheless, nothing sells like scandal. I’m thinking you tell the world what really happened. Tell them about being Doctor Lecter’s boy.”

 

* * *

 

**1922**

Will could make out very little of the Verger estate, nestled in the ink of the night like dust in the folds of a sumptuous gown. He recalled the newspaper cuttings that Hannibal had shown him, and as they pulled up outside, he tried to imagine it in all its sunlit splendour. It had been built in the style of an old Germanic castle––the sort of thing that ought to be surrounded by an encampment of tall, furious fir trees, but was instead courted on all sides by largely sparse lawns. There were stables and enclosures for the livestock, numbered amongst which were the Verger pigs, made infamous by a certain Fredricka Lounds’ sensational claim that they dined on human flesh.

 

**1928**

 

“I couldn’t have conjured up a more fitting setting for something as farcical as what took place there that night.”

 

**1922**

 

The curls in Will’s hair had come free, after a barrage of both the evening’s humidity and Mason’s insistent hands. He wondered if he ought to be worried, but he felt more like himself now, and that backed up each of his footsteps with a near arrogant stride. Any minute now, he could be Will Graham again.

Hannibal Lecter would not abandon Will Graham.

The bedroom walls were white. It was like being inside an asylum cell. The scarlet duvet was a bloodstain, and Mason pulled him down onto it, pressing against Will’s lips with his own as fiercely as if he were crushing petals in his fist. He dragged his fingers through Will’s hair, jerking his head back and making him wince.

“You look so pretty with that face,” Mason whined. “The rest of you better be as pretty.”

A smirk bled onto Will’s mouth. “Or what––you’ll feed me to your pigs?”

“Take off your clothes or I’ll cut you out of them.”

Will tore himself away, although Mason clung on as if they were stitched together and he feared what skin may be ripped in the process. “I want a drink first. I always like a drink first.”

 

**1928**

 

Matthew nodded to Freddie and shrugged. “I’ll concede that there is where being a gentleman might be a benefit. What I wouldn’t give for a rich daddy to leave me a cellar and my own private stock.”

Freddie ignored him. “What happened next, Mr Graham?”

“There was a drinks’ cabinet in the study. Mr Verger was intoxicated from the party, and so I was able to leave him and go downstairs to fix us both a drink. I dissolved the sachet of powder Doctor Lecter had given to me previously, and gave that glass to Mr Verger.” Will could feel sweat pooling under his palms where he gripped the edge of the couch. “Before going back upstairs, I telephoned the gatehouse to inform them that we were to be joined by another guest, and that they were to admit him without question.”

Freddie nodded, raising her scotch to her lips, but then glancing at the two young men and slowly setting it back down on the coffee table. “And so when Mr Verger ingested the drug you gave him, that’s when Doctor Lecter arrived?”

 

**1922**

 

Mason crawled over to the bedpost, moaning with every movement he brought himself to make as the chemical shook his body. For an instant, Will felt almost sorry for him, and extended a hand to help him to his feet. Mason swatted it away with a hiss, and, clutching at the duvet, managed to haul himself up so that he sat on the edge of the bed. He lurched forwards badly as if he was going to vomit, but Will caught him and propped him up again.

“You…” Mason spluttered, pawing at Will’s belt buckle. “Why aren’t my hands working?”

Will leaned down and kissed him lightly on the lips, thinking it a poetic justice that Mason Verger should know how it felt to be taken advantage of just once before he died, but he pulled away sharply on finding the other man’s mouth glossy with bile.

“You––I know who you are!” Mason choked. “Damn it…damn it, I should have worked it out sooner, shouldn’t I?” He ran his trembling hand over Will’s crotch. “I knew you looked familiar, kid, I _knew_ …” He hooked his fingers into Will’s waistband and bit into the flesh with his fingernails. Will let out a sudden cry, and so he repeated the action until his fingers came away bloody and Will was left whimpering. “You’re Lecter’s boy, aren’t you? You’re Lecter’s boy…”

Mason kicked him hard in the knee and sent him crashing to the floor, but from there Will saw his expression change like colours running in a painting. His mouth twisted open and his big round eyes stared at the doorway behind Will, blinking so rapidly that tears started to streak down his cheeks.

As if in time to some swinging pendulum, Hannibal Lecter walked across the floor to Will and bent down to kiss him gently on the forehead, pressing his face into the boy’s tangled curls as he did so.

“Indeed he is, Mr Verger,” he said, his voice as sweet and dark as black cherries. He looked up at the man now convulsing on the bed, and smiled. “Exclusively.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one turned out a bit longer than usual, but I wanted to get it posted. If I don't stick to a schedule then goodness knows what shall become of me.
> 
> Check out my Tumblr (flurgburgler.tumblr.com) if you fancy, for there is artwork to go with all of this nonsense.


	4. Sunday

**1928**

Four half-glasses of scotch later found Will lying on the floor beside Matthew, watching a dark stain of damp that was spreading above their heads like a bruise.

“I can’t believe you,” Matthew said, keeping his gaze fixed on the ceiling.

“I heard that a lot during my trial. What is it you’re struggling with this time?”

“There’s no need to be so bitter, not with me.” Matthew rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow. “I just can’t believe you told Freddie everything.”

“I only told Miss Lounds what she needed in order to write a successful article.”

“Will, you damn fool, they’ll lynch you.”

He ripped himself away from the infection on the ceiling and sat up. Matthew’s little green eyes were wide, underscored with fragile mauve crescents from too many long nights at the hospital. The dull light picked out in white and brass the tears lurking at the corners. Will had never seen him cry before, nor had he ever heard him address him by his first name. He felt the hairs rise on his arms, as if the stale air of the apartment was shifting uneasily around them.

He cleared his throat and tried not to look at Matthew. “You––err––you don’t need to worry about that.”

“You know, somehow I don’t think you’ll get any more respect as another man’s lover than you did as a suspected murderer. Not here.” There was a hardness to Matthew’s voice, but Will thought it less fierce and more like pressure put on fractured glass to keep it together, to try and stop it shattering.

“Miss Lounds and I have an arrangement. Anything written about me will have to be published posthumously.”

Matthew sat up too, and neither of them looked at the other. They stared straight ahead out of the greasy window, seeing their own state of mind reflected back at them in the winter grey of Baltimore.

“I thought you were trying to help her make a name for herself. She may have to wait decades before she gets to publish anything.”

“Or she may not.”

“Go to hell, Graham,” he said, getting to his feet. He threw on his coat and stalked over to the door.

“You’re leaving?” Will thought his voice came out somewhat smaller than he’d remembered it being.

Matthew sighed and raked a hand through his thick black hair. There must have been rain between here and the hospital, because it was curling slightly at his temples, and it only did that when it dried. Will had always liked that. He found it comforting when there were aspects about a person that they couldn’t control.

“I need some sleep. It’s exhausting being the only person who gives a damn about you.”

Matthew slammed the door on his way out. He was probably right, Will thought, lying back down on the floorboards. The hardness reminded him of the concrete floor he had so often slept on in the hospital. He did not appreciate the reminder, but it kept him grounded, and he supposed that ought to be worth something when the only person left who gave a damn about him had just walked out.

 

* * *

 

**1922**

Mason Verger lay twitching in the midnight blue of the room like loose straw caught in a soft wind. He laughed occasionally, but he had lost the art of forming any coherent speech some time ago. Sweat pasted his hair to his forehead and cheekbones, and blood smothered his throat like a macabre silk scarf. Hannibal sat beside him, his hand wrapped around Mason’s, as he guided the other man’s movements and carved off another strip of flushed moist cheek.

Will went to the desk by the window, and jerked open the drawer. Wads of dollar bills were honeycombed tightly inside, and he had to dig his nails under to force them free. He loosed them from their bands, and against the white spotlight of the moon, tossed notes into the air, letting them confetti down around him. He threw them high for his father, thinking of the splintered clapboards on the porch, and the bare walls washed with thin paint that had long lost any hint of colour. He threw them higher for his lover, who watched him so steadily now, and his mind turned to their half-devised plans of elopement, of forays to Rome and Venice concocted amongst a tangle of bed sheets and heated kisses.

“Let’s run away, let’s go now,” he called to Hannibal, motioning with a fan of banknotes for him to come nearer.

Mason sniggered, and Doctor Lecter’s lips peeled back, exposing his vampiric canines in a somewhat morbid smile.

“I must apologise, Mr Verger,” he said. “It seems I am needed elsewhere. You can finish the job by yourself though, can’t you?” He left Mason nodding emphatically with the knife, and trotted over to where Will was waiting for him.

Hannibal’s fingertips were slick and red, and they traced the curve of Will’s lips, leaving a smear of blood that the latter tentatively licked away.

“Good,” Hannibal whispered, nudging his own mouth against the crook of Will’s neck. “Good boy.”

He slid his hands around Will’s thighs and lifted him. Will hooked his legs around Hannibal’s waist, and clutched at his shoulders, feeling the muscles taut beneath his grasp.

“Remarkable boy.” Hannibal’s voice was warm and spiced as mulled wine. “How I cherish thee.”

Will laughed and kissed him. His chest felt tight and burning, as if he had been running through smoke and the feel of Hannibal’s mouth on his was a sudden moment of oxygen that he could not get enough of. The copper punch of blood ran over both their tongues––a figment of continuity, Will thought, between we two who could not have been more different had we tried.

They made love against the desk, their fingers making fists in dollar bills, and Will swore that he loved him until he had no more breath to say it with. He sat curled up in Hannibal’s arms until their skin went cold, and Mason Verger had stopped moving altogether.

“Is he dead?” Will asked, yawning into his jacket.

Hannibal set the comatose young man on his side, taking a moment to admire the grisly vermillion mask now etched on the lower portion of his face, before turning back to Will. “He’s unconscious.”

“I thought you wanted to kill him?”

Hannibal shrugged. “I wanted to, yes. That was this afternoon––circumstances have changed. Now I want to see what happens.”

Will frowned. “He might have killed me, you know.”

“I would not have let that happen. Now, come along, little prince, it’s time we were gone from this place.”

They walked out into the night hand in hand. The summer air was warm and thick as fur, and a dry breeze carded through Will’s curls as he stood gazing up at the nickel of the moon.

“Promise me we’ll be looking at this moon from somewhere else one day,” he said. “Somewhere a million miles from here.”

Hannibal dipped his head, and then raised it again, his chin tilted up, his profile svelte and regal. Perhaps it was a nod. Perhaps it wasn’t. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

“A cigarette,” Will said, as he slid into the car, sleep muffling his tongue. “I want a cigarette. Where’s my case?”

“Hush, William.” Hannibal leaned over and lightly kissed his mouth. “You shan’t need it anymore.”

 

* * *

 

They came for him at dawn. The sky was stained peach in the west––the colour of kisses, Will thought––as he awoke in an empty bed to the chorus of fists on the screen door. He caught his reflection in the window as he scrambled to respond, and sorely wished he hadn’t.

“I’m sorry for the wait. I got in late last night. I was asleep.”

The two policemen eyed his un-tucked shirt and matted hair, which no doubt reeked of sex and sweat, and frowned, the younger one scribbling something down on a notepad with his tongue between his teeth.

“William Graham?” asked the older officer, his face creasing along familiar lines as his jaw worked.

Will nodded.

“I’m Detective James Price, and this is Sergeant Brian Zeller. We believe you may have information pertaining to an attack that took place in Baltimore last night.”

Will nodded again. “Won’t you come in?”

He could feel his heart thrashing as they moved into the sitting room. It pulsed through him in a vertical line––behind his eyes, in his throat, under his ribs, buried in his gut. For a moment it was all he could hear, and he kept glancing at the officers to assure himself that he was the only one.

They sat on his couch and fiddled with the buttons on his cushions, telling him all about the incident involving a certain Mr Mason Verger. Will swallowed and said he was sorry to hear it.

“I imagine you would be,” said Zeller. “Seeing as you were the last person to see him before it happened.”

Price smiled with one side of his mouth. “Apart from the assailant, of course.”

Zeller completed the expression with the other side of his. “Of course.”

They asked him questions about the party at the Komeda’s. They said there were witnesses who had seen him leaving with Mr Verger, and Carlo the driver confirmed he had taken them to the estate. Will sat very still, his knuckles taut white and his jaw clenched, and replied with a story about Mason’s offer of a bottle of private whiskey.

He thought about Hannibal. He would drive to Baltimore and see him as soon as the police were finished here, he decided. It was to be a Sunday, and perhaps Hannibal would cook him a late breakfast––poached eggs, maybe, or something with an elaborate French name that Will didn’t understand. They could go for a drive, and Will could show him where he’d had such luck fishing lately. They could make plans for Venice.

But as Price and Zeller pressed on with their questions, punctuated with raised eyebrows and sidelong glances at one another, Will came to realise that he and Hannibal would do none of those things.

As they informed him of Mason’s condition––disfigured and amnesic––Will let go of the idea of poached eggs. They told him that the guard on the gate had admitted a second guest that night, and he felt fear pooling at the base of his spine; as he lied that he had already left the estate by then, he knew that there would be no going fishing either. They produced the cigarette case engraved with his initials, and explained how it had been recovered at the scene of the crime, and as fragments of attempted murder charges were recited, Will understood that Hannibal had never meant to make plans for Venice––at least, none that included him.

In the end, as the day broke over Wolf Trap, Virginia in shades of forget-me-not, and Will Graham was escorted from his home in handcuffs, all that came true was Sunday.


	5. The Stranger

**1921**

An impetuous breeze rolled over the docks in the Chesapeake Bay, bringing with it a light rain and the scent of brine. Will pushed his hair from his eyes and examined the horizon. It must have been raining harder out at sea, as the clouds were smudged down towards the skyline like untended inks. The white of the sky met the grey of the ocean with very little tonal disagreement, and Will thought the whole landscape looked like nothing but cold, dead skin.

He scarcely felt alive himself. His stomach was almost heavy with the lack of food; the notion of emptiness was weighing him down, reminding him to eat.

It was not a lack of resolve, but he was owed two weeks wages, and he was late with repayments for the new house in Wolf Trap. Food would have to come later.

The throaty ‘shush’ of steam ships escorted Will away from the quayside, and followed him like a whispering child down a side alley. He tasted the sweet four o’ clock cold in the air as he wet his lips, and turned up the collar on his coat to shelter his neck from the agitated wind as he walked. He knocked off his cap in the process, but bending down to retrieve it, suddenly found a calloused hand already grasping it.

“Here you go, son,” said the man, offering the hat back to Will. “You don’t want to go losing it in this weather.” He wore his own tweed cap, but Will could see his hair was thin and peppery at the sides. His suit was plain, and his features pockmarked and pale, but he grinned a lot. He grinned so that Will could see all of his teeth.

“I’ve seen you around here before.”

Will glanced around in the hope that someone else would appear out of the grey evening. He did not care to be alone with strangers; especially those that tried to strike up conversation.

“You’re that Graham boy, aren’t you?” He kept shifting so that Will could not avoid looking at his face.

“Yes,” Will admitted. “I work here.”

“Came up from New Orleans, didn’t you? That’s what they say.” When he got no response, the man drawled on, “Never had much time for the south. I’m from Minnesota myself.”

A shadow was falling over the bay, as the sky grew darker, heralding the oncoming rain. Will nodded, but he wanted to get to the station quickly, reluctant to have to fork out more money for a room in Baltimore overnight. “I’d better be going.” He crammed the cap back onto his head. “Thanks.”

“Whoa, hey, hey,” said the man, still smiling. He stretched out his arms and Will found that he could not pass him. “Don’t you want to know me?”

“Excuse me?”

The man’s eyes narrowed and he leaned in closer. The stink of raw meat came at Will like fingers crawling down his gullet. “They say you can do that–– that you can _know_ anybody. You can understand.” He moved forwards, one measured step at a time, until Will had damp wood and glass pressed against his back. “It’s so hard finding anyone to appreciate what I do, Mr Graham, and I put ever so much thought into it. I consider every part. I honour every part.”

Will felt something sharp digging into his lower abdomen. “Oh god,” he breathed, leaning as far back into the doorway as he could. “Please––I’m sorry––I think you’ve made a mistake. I don’t know you.”

The thin man shut his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nose. “But you will, Mr Graham. That’s why I’m here. You _will_.”

His eyes opened as if he was a candle fluttering to life. He prodded Will with the concealed blade, until the latter emitted a yelp like a bitten pup.

“Let the boy go.” The voice came onto the scene like paint spilled into a gutter. From his location in the alcove, Will was unable to catch sight of the speaker, and when he tried to move, his aggressor slammed him back roughly against the door.

“Get going, mister,” the man hissed, not looking anywhere but Will. “This ain’t any of your business.”

“Let the boy go, Mr Hobbs.” It was an undulating ballad of an accent––something European, Will thought––but this Hobbs fellow seemed less than impressed.

“How the hell do you…?” He rounded on the intruder, the blade––a hunting knife, one used for gutting––flashing in his right hand, but the stranger was quicker.

In an instant, Mr Hobbs sank down onto the paving stones, arms flailing as if he were a child catching butterflies without a net. The front of his shabby suit began to darken as blood from his heaving ruptured jugular crept into the fabric. Wheezing, he clawed at the air once more, before flopping onto his back, where his torso pumped up and down, but no more sound was heard.

Will did not move. He wasn’t certain he could have, even if he’d wanted to. His breaths were quick and shallow, and he could feel his own pulse twitching under his jaw. When his knees gave way, he barely remembered to put his hands out to break the fall, only to find that they were spattered thick with red.

“Oh god,” he panted. “Oh god, oh god…oh _hell_.”

He thought he was going to fall for sure then, but he suddenly felt hands under his arms, and the loss of any sensation in his legs, as if he had left them behind.

“Come now,” said the voice that decanted like syrup. “Can you stand up?”

Will nodded, and then shook his head. “Oh god… I don’t know.”

“Try and focus, boy.” A hand snaked under his chin and nudged it upwards. “Look at me.”

The face was further up than Will had expected, for the stranger was a good deal taller than him. At first his gaze was drawn to the pinstripe suit, the corner of a white silk handkerchief folded crisply into the breast pocket, and the full-length fur coat draped somewhat decadently over the man’s broad shoulders. He looked older than Will, by at least some twenty years or so, but his hair was laced with golden hues, and his skin was still stretched tight over his raised cheekbones and clean shaven jaw, as if it was comfortable there.

“You––you didn’t get any on you?” Will glanced down at his own bloody hands, and then back to the near spotless Arctic of pale fur.

His rescuer cocked his head to the side and smiled, aiming his wide cupid’s bow of a lip. “Staying well clear of arterial spray is a good habbit to acquire.”

Will wretched a laugh. “You’re rather chipper about all this.” He looked him up and down again before adding a tentative, “sir.”

The other man nodded once. “What is it you Americans say–– _no use crying over spilt milk?_ ”

“You spilled a little more than milk.”

“So I did.” He was still smiling. It was a glorious smile, Will thought; one that went all the way up to his eyes. “Are you hurt?”

Parting his coat and rolling up his shirt, Will inspected the damage done by the hunting knife. “It’s only a scratch,” he said. “Barely even drew blood.”

The stranger crouched down in front of him and ran a finger along the sharp red line etched just above the waistband. Will took a sudden breath, his body shying away from the contact.

“You are afraid?”

“Shouldn’t I be?” Will asked. He wasn’t sure he knew the answer himself. This fellow was the kind of man that made one feel like they were shivering, even when they weren’t.

Will snatched a glance at the now motionless body of Mr Hobbs, who, only yards from the water’s edge had drowned in his own blood.

The stranger followed his eyes. “Was he right about you? Do you understand men like him?”

Will shifted from one foot to the other, tucking his shirt back in. “I can understand, yes, but that doesn’t mean I condone.”

“A rare gift indeed. Did you understand Mr Hobbs?”

“I might have done,” he said, dragging his gaze from the corpse. “Before you cut his throat.”

“Perhaps I shall leave you to it next time then.”

“Next time?” Will rubbed hard at his forehead. He had a train to catch, there was no time for blood and bodies and beguiling strangers. “Look, I appreciate your…assistance. I’ve got to go. I won’t tell anyone about the body.”

“I know.” The man extended another illuminating smile and a slender hand. “I hope we’re to meet again, boy.”

“Graham,” he sighed. “Will Graham. Thank you.” He realised that they had stopped shaking hands several moments ago, and now their fingers lightly held each other’s. The warmth of this stranger’s skin against the chill of his own was like wild heavy current above the clouds; it was a broiling storm, and Will felt it right down to his bones.

“Doctor Hannibal Lecter. And it was my pleasure, Mr Graham.”

 

* * *

 

**1922**

“William Graham. This Court finds you guilty of the murders of Mr Garrett Jacob Hobbs, Miss Cassie Boyle, Miss Georgia Madchen and Dr Donald Sutcliff, as well as the attempted murder of Mr Mason Verger. The punishment for these crimes is death. However, on the advice given to this Court by Dr Frederick Chilton that you can not have been in your right state of mind when you committed said crimes, it is therefore considered and ordered by the Court that you, William Graham, are to be remanded into his custody at the Baltimore State Lunatic Hospital within the week beginning on Sunday, the third day of September, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Twenty-two, where you shall serve out three consecutive life sentences. This is the sentence of the law.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid I got a little bored with this chapter, so apologies if it's not all that exciting, but I needed to get some stuff in to prepare for the next few chapters. Sigh.
> 
> Also, that court stuff at the end is so vague and awful, so please correct me on anything I got wrong. I was trawling 1920s US court proceedings, but I couldn't find the right phrasing :(


	6. Baltimore State Lunatic Hospital

**1922**

Doctor Chilton was not a bad person. If there was any scant trace of evil in him, it might only have been found in his self-inflicted ignorance of the goings on at Baltimore State Lunatic Hospital.

No, in truth he was not so awful, Will admitted, as he hung in the grip of the two orderlies hauling his pink and steaming body from the hydrotherapy room.

He knew evil. He had seen evil, and Frederick Chilton was not it. The man was vain, certainly, but he laughed at his own jokes and sometimes played the gramophone in his office. In another life, thought Will, the two of them might have been friends.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Will dreamt about Hannibal. Sometimes he loved him, and on other occasions he found himself with his hands around that murderer’s throat, squeezing until his neck crunched. He awoke from those reveries with his insides twisted and his chest aching with the realisation that Doctor Lecter had been none of the things Will had thought he was, only the spaces in between.

“So how are we feeling today, Mr Graham?” said Chilton. He pulled up a stool opposite his desk, Will’s ankle cuffs clinking over the floor as the boy shuffled onto the seat. “Are we up for a little conversation?”

Chilton always said ‘we’––a laughably obvious tactic, Will thought, to try to gain his favour, his trust. Will stared straight past the doctor to the dim grey wall behind. It was futile. He no longer had any trust to give.

“I feel… I feel filled up.”

Chilton nodded, gathering up his note pad. Keeping his eyes firmly on the paper as he wrote, he said, “Filled up with what, Mr Graham?”

“Lack. I am filled with the lack of feelings at all.” Will shifted his hands and the chains that bound his sore wrists chimed. He thought it mad, but the noise reminded him of Hannibal. The two of them had been like notes at opposite ends of the scale sounding together, and yet still managing to make something beautiful. The reminder made him convulse as if he’d been shot.

“Would you care to elaborate?”

Will looked down at his hands. “Perhaps when you’ve been hurt often enough, Doctor Chilton, you feel nothing. I, however… I feel a great fullness in my gut. I am filled with the lack of him. It’s like it’s ripping at my skin, trying to get out, trying to save me from the nothing that he has to give.”

Chilton’s mouth thinned and shrank at the corners. “Are we talking about Hannibal Lecter now?”

“It’s something physical, something actual… it’s _in_ me. It’s as if my heart has been stretched out––no, like it is stretching out to him, and I am filled with the lack of feeling that he is reaching back.”

“Mr Graham.” Chilton frowned and put down his note pad. “Mr Graham, I thought we had been over this: I am not here to console your broken heart. As I have told you before, you are struggling to cope with Doctor Lecter’s rejection of your _unhealthy_ infatuation with him, and as a result of this struggle, you have laid the blame for your murders at his door.” He picked up the note pad again and Will heard his pen humming rapidly over the paper, clearly pleased with his sudden burst of analysis. “Now, I don’t want to hear anymore about your unnatural inclination towards Doctor Lecter, not in this session.” He glanced up at Will and his brow relaxed. “Look here, perhaps if we can cover some real ground in these sittings, we can start you on some aversion therapy in the New Year.”

“Real ground?”

“Yes, Mr Graham.” Chilton sighed and rubbed his eyelids with a free hand. “Come on, kid, I did what I could to save you from the chair. You heard the judge––they were going to fry you up, and frankly that didn’t sit right with me. You’re certainly suffering from some kind of psychosis, but any illness can be cured with the right treatment.”

Will raised his eyebrows. “You’re going to reform me?”

“And maybe, in time, the restrictions on your incarceration will be reduced.”

“What’s in it for you?”

“Mr Graham, if my time here in Baltimore has shown me anything, it is that I exist in a world of monsters.” He leaned back in his chair and grinned at Will. “What you may think of as selfish, I call self-preservation.”

Will returned the smile. “That sounds like something you’ve picked up from one of your patients, Doctor.”

Disdain dripped into the expression, and Chilton rose up and limped round to Will’s side of the desk, his tick of his cane on the floor measuring out the elongated stretch of time it took to move so short a distance. Will almost felt sorry for him.

“You’ve got quite the mouth on you, haven’t you, boy?” He forced Will’s chin up with the cane handle. “What’s _in it for me_ , Mr Graham, is recognition.” He enunciated the final word as if it offended him to have it in his mouth. “Recognition for my years of hard work in this hospital. You and your crimes are an infamous pair in famous circles.” He gave Will a hard nudge with the cane. “You cooperate with me on writing an analysis, and I’ll see to it that you’re treated well here.”

The knock at the door gave Chilton a start that Will felt reverberated through their contact. It was like a telegram along a wire, and, reading all the fear and self-doubt that lurked there, he was nearly glad that it was he and not some actual maniac sat assessing Doctor Chilton.

“What?” Chilton yapped.

A young man in orderlies’ whites opened the door. In his left hand he carried a steel muzzle. “Excuse me, sir, but Mr Graham is scheduled for hydrotherapy this morning.” The smoke of Boston laced his accent and gave it a thick texture that Will was certain he could almost touch.

“Hydrotherapy…?” Chilton retracted his cane. “Yes. Yes, very well.” He retreated to the self-assurance of his chair once more.

The orderly stepped boldly, and his fingers moved without any hint of motion that could be mistaken for trembling, as he approached Will and secured the muzzle around his face.

“Brown, isn’t it?” said Chilton wearily, rubbing his eyes again.

“Yes, sir. Matthew Brown.”

“You’re the new fellow, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” For a voice as rich as his, Will thought it curious that Matthew Brown spoke so inscrutably.

“Do you know why you’ve got that muzzle, Mr Brown?” Chilton narrowed his eyes, but he was looking at Will.

“I was told to bring it, sir.” Matthew’s fingers lingered on the straps at the nape of Will’s neck. Will could feel their warmth as they brushed over the hairs. “Is he dangerous?”

“Mr Graham cut out the lungs of one of his victims whilst she breathed,” said Chilton. “And ate them.”

Matthew’s hand hesitated, and then slowly came to rest between Will’s shoulder blades. “I’ll be careful then.”

That was enough.

“I’m not going to help you,” muttered Will, his voice muffled by the cage around his mouth.

“I beg your pardon?” Chilton folded his arms across his chest; his jacket sleeves making them appear like two great serpents bound around him.

Will rose as Matthew pressed lightly against his back. “I won’t help you. You may take what you will from me, but I refuse to let you publish lies.”

Chilton rolled his eyes and waved idly at Matthew. “Take him away. Oh, and Brown––hydrotherapy, did you say? Give him a cold soaking today. Cool that temper of his.”

“No!” Will barked. He tried to swipe at the doctor across the desk, but his feet became tangled with his chains and he fell forwards. Matthew caught him under the arms and hauled him upright.

“Come on, Mr Graham.” He held him tightly as he pulled him from the office.

“I didn’t kill anyone!” cried Will.

He cried it until his throat ached and his palette was dry and singed with the taste of blood. He choked on the remnants of it as he was stripped down and thrust under the icy fist of the showerhead. The cold water hit him like a fright––a sensation he felt right between the eyes before it leapt up to his scalp. He took great gasps of air as if the oxygen was running out, and his chest felt so heavy he feared his lungs had frozen solid beneath his ribs. The temperature slowed down the blood flow to the brain, quickly rendering his motions sluggish and his speech slurred like that of a drunkard.

Matthew was gone by the time Will was released and half carried, half dragged back to his cell. The orderlies left him lying on the floor, naked and shivering. He drew his knees up to his collarbones, and curled his arms around his shins. If he shut his eyes and thought hard enough, he could pretend they were Hannibal’s arms instead. In some lonely vestibule inside his head––the part that still let him dream of love––he imagined soft cotton underneath him instead of concrete, the heady scent of sweet cologne instead of the reek of sweat and iron, and warm hands stroking his hair in place of this unbearable loneliness. He almost thought he could feel Hannibal, lying there beside him. Though his body ached, he struggled to roll over, just to see if it was true. The outline of his damp form was writ in moisture on the floor like a fingerprint, evidence of his misery, but he found no proof of anyone else.

Matthew called by half an hour later with a dry uniform for him, but by then Will was shaking so badly that he couldn’t even move.

“Jesus Christ,” the orderly said, crouching down beside him. “They told me they’d at least left you with a blanket. I didn’t know…” He tried to move Will into a position in which he could dress him, but the boy kept shuddering and he couldn’t get his arms through the sleeves. “Damn it, they’re going to kill you like this, Mr Graham.”

Will felt Matthew’s hands under him once again, but this time the orderly lifted his torso up from the floor and nestled him in his lap. He encircled his quivering shoulders with firm arms, and rubbed Will’s fingers until he was able to flex them again.

“I… I never…” Will whispered. “Please… I’m so cold…” He pawed at the orderly’s shirt, and whimpered at the sudden warmth of tears on his cheeks.

“Ssshh,” said Matthew, giving Will’s hand a squeeze. “It’s all right, Mr Graham, you’re all right. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

 

* * *

 

**1928**

 

Will did not dream of Hannibal Lecter anymore, although he sometimes dreamt of the water. This time it was black, and colder than he had ever remembered. He felt nothing, of course, but intangible scatters of what his mind perceived to be cold. Nevertheless, it didn’t fail to stop his body shutting down. So convinced of that freezing black water, Will’s limbs began to stiffen, corpse-like, whilst his torso shook as if he had the Devil in him.

When he heard the front door go, and boots removed to make way for the silent tread of socks, he let out a desperate, stuttered howl. The bedroom door whined open, its hinges choked with rust.

“Ssshh,” Matthew whispered, making his way over to the bed and lying down beside him. His voice was so quiet that Will only knew he was speaking from the hot breath he felt on the back of his neck. “You’re safe. You’re home.”

The smell of spirits saturated him like heavy rain, and the scent got up Will’s nose and made him flinch, but Matthew never touched him, and Will was glad not to be alone.

He closed his eyes against the outline of Matthew’s face, his profile, illuminated in gold by the street lamps outside, scrawled on the backs of Will’s eyelids, shifting until he had nothing but the certainty that the other man was there at all. For the first time in six years, he fell asleep to the sound of breathing other than his own, but he awoke to nothing, save for a snarl of bed sheets showing the imprecise contours of a person––like a fingerprint, but evidence of something else entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm afraid my knowledge of asylums comes largely from horror movies, so my apologies if this is all woefully incorrect.
> 
> Thank you ever so much for all the kudos and fab comments I've had on here and Tumblr! If you fancy, check out my blog––flurgburgler.tumblr.com––for some accompanying artwork.


	7. Breakfast at Doctor Lecter's

 

**1928**

There were pigments of something in the still air of the bedroom that aroused Will’s taste buds and stirred him from unconsciousness. He lifted his head from the pillow, only to be slapped with the scratchy stench of something burnt.

“What’re you doing?” he said, his mouth thick with sleep, as he wandered into the kitchen.

“Cooking you breakfast,” replied Matthew, lifting the pan off the gas and flipping two eggs into the air.

“I can see that. I mean, what’re you doing here? It’s Wednesday.”

“I told Chilton there was a private emergency. I felt bad about walking out on you yesterday––so sue me. Can’t a guy cook eggs for a friend?” He reached into a cupboard, obscured briefly by the door, but reappeared smiling and holding the salt.

“Sure,” said Will, leaning against the sideboard. “If that’s what this is.”

Matthew rolled his eyes. “Look, I came back to check on you last night and you were in a bad way. I figured if I didn’t make you something to eat you just wouldn’t eat at all.”

Will shrugged, and eyed the slices of black toast, soggy with butter, piled up by the stove. His tongue crawled back in his mouth at the thought of how they would taste, but his stomach groaned, and so he reached out and took one. The bitterness almost made him gag, but it was food, and Matthew was right––he had not eaten properly in days.

“Gee, wait for me, why don’t you?”

Will smirked at him, and through a mouthful of charcoal crumbs replied, “Brown, this is utterly disgusting.”

 “Well, my apologies, your majesty,” said Matthew, shaking his head. “Oh hey, I ran into your pal Crawford last night, by the way. He doesn’t like me, does he?”

“Damn it, Brown, you’ve got to be careful. Crawford’s made it clear before that he knows all about your bootlegging. He has contacts in the police, he could make things very difficult for you if you don’t watch yourself.”

“Will you calm down? He only told me to let you know that he’ll be coming round this morning. He said he’s got some news for you.”

Will gulped down what remained of the toast in his mouth and let out a long stream of breath through pursed lips. “Did he say what it was?”

“As if he’d entrust that to me.” Matthew shimmied the eggs onto a plate and thrust them at Will. “Now eat. Worry about Crawford when he gets here.”

Will did worry. He changed his shirt and combed his hair, and then retreated to the couch after breakfast. He tried to keep the food down, but his legs were bouncing and he could hear the blood flushing through his head, humming like an electric current.

Everything could change the moment Jack walked through the door. He knew very well that he had been the one to ask the P.I. to locate the cigarette case, but he had supposed it would simply be something nice to have. All his memories of those days seemed to become more out of focus the more he thought on them, but the cigarette case was something tangible. It was proof that things really happened the way he said they did. It was proof that he was not the delusional madman Doctor Chilton had tried so fervently to convince him he was. Will thought he would have been glad to have it back again.

And yet… Jack was bringing news. News was unasked for, news was not something actual that he could grasp and assure himself with. News might come with a name––a name he had called out night after empty night in the black of his cell; a name he had ribboned with untouchable concepts of love and loathing, until he finally understood that that was all Hannibal Lecter had ever been. He was abstract. He was a figure that one thought they glimpsed in the mist, but when on closer inspection, one realised that there was nothing there at all, and it was merely a ghost of a thought that had been seen. Will had never really been able to touch him.

When the knocking was finally heard at the door, Will ran to the bathroom and threw up his breakfast.

* * *

**1921**

It was a house from the previous century, or perhaps the one before. Will had no head for architecture, but a building from the minds behind the ‘new’ Baltimore it most certainly was not. Tall slender windows were set amongst sandy-hued bricks, symmetrical around the painted wooden porch that framed the round arched doorway.

Though he could not see beyond the muslin curtains, Will thought it a light and not unpleasant home––save for the railings. One didn’t have railings unless there was something to keep out. The tall iron spears had escorted him along the street and up to the front gate like a courting gentleman in evening black, and now he stood staring, willing himself to climb the steps and knock upon the grand panelled door.

He might have stood there forever, had it not begun to rain. He had spent longer than he’d meant to combing back his curls that morning and had no desire to have them tousled by the elements. He wanted to look his best, although he insisted to himself, as he ascended the porch steps, that this was not for any particular reason.

He knocked.

He waited.

Perhaps no one was at home. Perhaps he should leave and come back another time––or not come back at all. That seemed preferable, and yet, at the same time, impossible.

The door opened like a maw, the fangs of fine furniture just in view behind the tongue that was Doctor Lecter.

“Ah, good morning, Mr Graham. Do come in.”

Will felt like the Devil, crossing the threshold of a place where he anticipated he did not belong.

“You’ll forgive my attire,” the doctor said, adjusting the folds in his smoking jacket as he closed the door. “I was not entirely convinced you would respond to my invitation.”

Will found the corners of his mouth bleeding into a smile before he could prevent it. He liked the way Doctor Lecter’s hair had been swept, undone, across his brow, draping a chaotic shadow over his eyes. He cut so contrasting a figure to the man who had rescued Will in the alleyway the week before, and yet he was so very much the same––tall and lean, and taking each step with such certainty, as if it troubled him very little what he might crush beneath him.

“Well, you should know that I don’t make a habit of having breakfast with murderers.” Will spat out a laugh. “Actually, I don’t make a habit of having breakfast at all these days.”

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, William,” said the doctor, as he took the boy’s coat and laid it out on a futon as if it were a sleeping child. “May I call you William?”

Will couldn’t remember considering nodding, but he found himself enacting the motion anyway.

Doctor Lecter nodded swiftly once in return. “Good. And you must call me Hannibal.”

“I’m not sure I know you well enough for that.”

“But of course you do,” said Hannibal, gesturing for Will to follow him across the hall. “You’ve seen me kill a man. From what I’ve heard of you and that astounding mind of yours, murder is a more than ample introduction.”

“If you say so, Hannibal.”

The salty tang of bacon beckoned them into the vast kitchen. An omelette bubbled on the stove, and a loaf of bread was steaming on a grate beside the oven.

 “I thought you’d have staff in a place like this.” Will glanced at Hannibal. “You look like the type.”

“I have a maid who comes every other day to clean,” said the doctor, attending to his omelette. “But I always insist on cooking my own meals.”

Will shifted, wishing he had some use to fulfil. He didn’t care for all the empty space around him. “Speaking of which, why _did_ you invite me to eat with you?”

Hannibal sliced the omelette neatly with one stroke of the spatula, and dished it out onto two bone china plates. “You already possess what you need to know me. I should like to know you.”

He walked over to Will then and placed a hand on his cheek. The boy leaned into the warmth of it so that his lips hushed over Hannibal’s palm.

“You intrigue me, William.”

His voice felt to Will as fine as lying back in a hot bath, and letting the water touch him wholly and intimately, as if it were a lover. Hannibal drew him closer, and with a free finger he traced a line slowly down the front of Will’s slacks. The boy let out a low, stuttering breath as he felt a sudden ache in his crotch.

“This––this isn’t right,” he murmured. “I’m not like that, I don’t feel…”

Hannibal brushed his hand up against him, and Will sensed the heat of a blush stealing onto his face as he realised he had grown hard.

“I’m afraid I must beg to differ, William.”

He pushed him up against the kitchen wall, the tiles slick with moisture from frying, and kissed him hard on the mouth. Will squeezed his eyes shut and murmured his name like a rosary as the doctor undid his trousers and dropped down to his knees, grazing Will’s erection with his teeth. The boy’s hips jerked forwards without waiting to see what the rest of him wanted, and Hannibal took him in his mouth. Will thought he could almost feel the curve of Doctor Lecter’s lips smiling at every yearning gasp he took. It wasn’t long before the heat between his legs was near unbearable, and his breaths became cries, begging for some kind of reprieve. He felt molten. He felt as if he were brimming over, spilling out of the shell of the person he had been right up until this moment. He came with his fingers making fists in Hannibal’s hair and his back arching in a way he had never held himself before.

By the time it was over, their breakfast had gone cold and stale, but it was the first occasion Will could remember not minding that he had nothing to eat. He wrapped himself in Hannibal’s embrace, and grinned against the other man’s lips, asking,

“How do you like me now, Doctor Lecter?”

 

* * *

**1928**

 

“If you’re not feeling so good, Mr Graham, perhaps I should come back tomorrow.” Jack Crawford sat in the chair across from Will, his hands clasped together as if in prayer.

“That suggests it’s bad news,” said Will. Whenever he spoke he could smell the way his breath reeked of vomit.

“That’s entirely up to you, Mr Graham.” But he sighed and it didn’t seem like it. “I’ve located your cigarette case.”

“That should be good news. Why isn’t is good news?” He wished Matthew hadn’t had to leave for the hospital so soon.

“As you know, much of what you owned was auctioned off after your arrest. I managed to use the records to trace the case, but I’m afraid they took me further than I meant to go.” Jack’s tone was even and low, but the words hung in the air like the cry of some beast caught alone in a trap.

The silence was like someone holding their breath. Maybe the both of them were.

At last Will said quietly, “Thank you, Mr Crawford. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to be alone for a little while. May I settle the payment with you later?”

Jack stared at him, head tilted to one side. “Of course, Mr Graham. I’ll call by this evening.” His voice was a dry summer breeze that whistled past Will with memories of a night many years ago, spent gazing up at the moon and dreaming of Italy.

After Jack had left, Will went to lie down. His stomach still swam, but his mind was on fire with all that had been left behind.

Hannibal had always been like poetry to him; old, sacrosanct poetry that one read in Latin and learnt by heart. Will felt as though he were a modernist stanza in comparison––all juxtaposed phrasing and no places to stop and breathe where one might expect.

But why should Doctor Lecter have kept the cigarette case?

Perhaps they had always been the other way around. Perhaps Will had grown to know his own self better these six years gone, and Hannibal was the spectre lurking between the lines he had learnt so well. Perhaps it was time to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be away for a few days, so I thought I'd better post the chapter I would have done tomorrow if I was around.
> 
> Thanks so much for all the kudos, and, as always, check out flurgburgler.tumblr.com for updates and accompanying artwork.


	8. Fever Therapy

 

**1921**

“I spent my childhood in New Orleans,” said Will, leaning back in Doctor Lecter’s armchair and shutting his eyes. He appreciated the way everything felt in Hannibal’s house, like he was really touching wealth. “My father worked on the riverboats there.”

Hannibal drew back his cigarette and exhaled smoke in strings of pearls. “You’ll pardon me, but you don’t sound very much like New Orleans.”

“We moved around a lot. I learnt to talk pretty for you fellas up here in the north,” he said, grinning as his tongue found the familiar shapes of the low, lazy timbre of Louisiana.

The doctor nodded briskly. “Nothing is more beautiful than seeing a person exist in their own skin, William–– _their_ skin, mind, not one that has been cut to suit them by others.”

Will shrugged. “My skin is mine because it is a combination of other people’s influences that no one else has compiled.” His mouth fell back into its all-American stride. It felt less of a hutch for his voice box these days, though, as much as it was a cabin he had made cosy out in the wilderness, and that New Orleans drawl was like coming home to find that someone had moved all the furniture around. “What about you, sir? Where did you get your skin?”

“Lithuania,” replied Hannibal, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table beside him. Smoke streamed out of the ashen crater like a visible scream. “But like you, I have rarely resided in one location for too long."

“Too long?”

“I spent three years serving as a surgeon in a Russian trench on the Eastern Front. That was too long a time to spend in such a place––not even Dante could have captured it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Will, dipping his head slightly.

His mind took him back to 1917. It was the sticky mire of early April, and his father woke him with the news that Woodrow Wilson had declared war on Germany. Some of the folk who had lost people in the U-boat attacks over the previous couple of years could be heard cheering in the streets, but Will’s father watched them all with a frown like rock hewn from the mountainside––his only son was but 16, and as far as he saw it, the war had plenty of time left to take Will from him. A year later, however, it was he whose bloated body grew heavy and sank amidst the cold Scottish currents of Scapa Flow, and left his boy alone to seek a new skin.

But even that, as tragic a thing as it was, had made sense to Will. His father had wanted to protect him. Hannibal Lecter displayed no essence of self-sacrifice, or of a desire to find glory on the field of battle. Will told him so.

“No, I did not go for glory.”

The doctor folded his arms so that his hands were concealed beneath his jacket sleeves. Will wondered if perhaps they were shaking, and he was flooded with a great desire to hold him.

“I followed my sister,” Hannibal said. “She had been training as a nurse before war broke out, and she was so bright, so alive with the notion that she could save people. As a qualified surgeon, no one brooked any argument with me accompanying her, but I only went to keep her safe.

“I cared little for the conflict. It made death ugly and I couldn’t abide that. We people are glorious, and our deaths must be a reflection of that. Our deaths should be beautiful, but I saw none of that in the war––only faces blown away to tatters, or splinters poking out of torsos like misshapen arms. It was Mischa, only Mischa, who made it all worthwhile. She made their _lives_ beautiful, if only for a time.”

Will left the comfort of the armchair, and came to kneel at Hannibal’s feet. Placing his hands in the doctor’s lap, he gazed up at him, admiring how the strained afternoon light picked out the inks of red in his eyes and offered them to Will as a gift. Will thought him more beautiful than any talk of life or death.

“What happened to her?” he asked.

Hannibal reached out and, with a sigh, began carding his fingers through the boy’s hair. “A bitter winter. She fell ill––so many of us did, but I wasn’t strong enough to save her. There wasn’t enough food, you see…” At this he turned away abruptly, blinking hard.

“I shan’t leave you to the wolves of the past,” said Will. “I shan’t ever leave your side, as long as I live.”

Hannibal leaned down and took Will’s face in his hands, immersing himself in the boy’s soft sea-salted curls as he planted a kiss on his forehead. “And I will keep those wolves from your door, sweet William. I will serve you better than I served poor Mischa. Little prince, I will keep you safe.”

 

* * *

 

**1922**

 

“God damn it, Chilton, can’t you see how ridiculous this has become? I didn’t kill anyone!” Though his manacles bit into his ankles with their fierce metal teeth, Will shot to his feet, and lunged at the doctor with the club his bound arms made for.

“Restrain him.”

The orderlies on the other side of the door rushed in, one kicked him behind the knees, sending him to the ground, whilst the other two grabbed his arms and legs.

Chilton walked in broken steps around the desk and looked down at Will as he squirmed to avoid the grip of his captors. “I told you, Mr Graham, that I’d scratch your back if you scratched mine, and frankly, I’m disappointed with the lack of scratching you’ve been doing,” he said, as he inspected his fingernails. “It’s clear hydrotherapy’s been unsuccessful in calming that temper of yours. Perhaps more severe treatment is required?”

Will’s eyes widened, and even as they strapped the muzzle on him he screamed. “No! No, you can’t do this to me!”

“Take Mr Graham to the infirmary.”

“What are you doing to me?” he cried, as the three men lifted him off the floor and carried him from the room. “Damn it, Chilton, what are you doing to me?”

They strapped him down to a gurney waiting in the corridor, and the doctor followed, limping quickly, as they wheeled Will along the passage way. He could feel his mouth growing sweet with saliva and he writhed under his restraints, trying to turn his head so that he wouldn’t choke should he vomit.

“There’s an intriguing new approach to your kind of aggression, Mr Graham,” said Chilton, somewhat out of breath. “The patient is injected with a dose of malaria to induce attacks of fever. Oh, fear not, Mr Graham, we have quinine––we won’t let you die––but it should certainly sedate that mind of yours.”

“No!” Will shrieked, his eyes rolling back into his head.

“Come now, there’s a 50% success rate with this type of therapy,” Chilton panted. “I really think that’s worth the risk if you want to recover, Mr Graham. You do want to recover, don’t you?”

Will thrashed wildly at his straps; tears blurred his vision like spectral fingers over his face, so that he was unable to see when Matthew Brown rounded the corner from the opposite direction.

“Doctor Chilton, what’s going on?”

Will’s body went limp at the sound of Matthew’s voice, and though could barely hear over the din his heart beat out in his chest, he would not fight Matthew. He could not.

“Mr Graham is being taken for fever therapy, Mr Brown, that’s all,” said Chilton. “If you’ve got nothing else to be doing, you could help us hold him down. He’s quite a lively customer, as you know.”

“Fever therapy––with malaria?” The way Matthew’s breath hitched between words broke Will’s heart, and he rasped,

“Don’t let them do this to me!”

“Doctor Chilton, you can’t, he’s too young––he won’t cope!”

Chilton let out a short, sharp inhalation. “If you don’t want to assist then I shall speak to you in my office afterwards, but for God’s sake, Brown, get out of the way of those who’re trying to help the poor boy.”

“But he’s not strong enough, you’ll kill him!”

The gurney burst through the split of the infirmary doors, and Will’s screaming roused several of the other patients into a caterwaul of groans and gasping sobs.

“For goodness sakes,” said Chilton. “Better keep him tied down for now or he’ll start a riot.” He thrust out an arm to prevent Matthew going any further. “That’s enough from you too. Wait for me in my office, Brown.”

“Please, sir, don’t do this to him.”

Chilton sighed and placed a hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “I’m trying to help him, Mr Brown. It’s for the best.”

“No! No, don’t leave me, don’t you leave me!” Will begged, as one of the orderlies produced a syringe, a clear liquid flying out of the tip by the needle. He began to jerk about furiously in one final fruitless endeavour to loosen his bindings.

“Hold him still,” said Chilton. “Mr Graham, you must hold still or you’ll botch the injection. This is for your own good.”

Will strained his eyes downwards. Matthew stood watching with his lips clamped firmly together and his arms wrapped around his chest the way a protective parent might hold a child. He would not meet Will’s stare.

The orderly with the needle bore down on the boy, piercing the soft clammy flesh inside the crook of his elbow. Will wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but at first felt no different. He glanced up at the men around his bed, unmoved by Chilton’s guttering smile, but when his heart began to race he smashed his eyes shut and moaned until he could not longer hear the gale of his blood pounding the annals of his head.

When he looked again, Matthew Brown had gone.

 

* * *

 

**1928**

Will sat on the bed watching the raindrops on their silent pilgrimage down the windowpane. A clock ticked on the bedside table. Sometimes he heard it, measuring out these hours of sweating palms and self-pity, whilst others he simply let it meld with the rhythm of the pulsing of his circulation. He was only aware that he had been crying when the skin on his cheeks began to feel taut and itchy. He wiped away the evidence with the back of his hand, irritated with himself that his body still insisted he be unhappy.

His head had told him to move on more times than Will cared to count, and it would have seemed like reason but for the bruising black pain that lurked there in the cavity between his lungs. Perhaps he wept because he knew that there could be no room for hurt in a body that had packed up the past in a suitcase and put it under the bed to forget about it. And he did hurt. He hurt terribly, as if someone was inside him squeezing hard on his heart, and he realised with a stunted choke of a wail that nothing could hurt that way save for love.

Will felt like a gramophone that had been left running in an empty room long after the music had ended. He had been playing Doctor Lecter’s song the whole time, and in this moment of wretched clarity, he felt as if he could let his hands hover over the conch of the machine, as if touching the echoes of Hannibal’s voice was akin to touching him.

He had promised he would keep Will safe. That one ran over and over like words on a gabbling lover’s tongue. He turned it all over in his head the way he had turned over the cigarette case the night it had been given to him.

It had to go––it all did. He had to burn it, raze it to the ground.

 

* * *

 

Matthew returned just as the sky was beginning to darken. Flecks of apricot still lingered by the horizon, and Will thought he felt like that sky a great deal––a murky, inky void consuming all but a patch of waning light.

Matthew’s hair was curling from the rain, and his cheeks were tinged pink with the long climb from the tram stop to the apartment block and up the many stairs to Will’s door. He sat down on the bed, sighing as he unlaced his shoes and tossed them into the corner. Will could smell on him the fresh and heady scent of wet paving stones. It made him smile.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Matthew said.

“Like what?”

“Like everything’s all right. I know it isn’t. I can guess what Crawford had to say to you, and I should have been here when he said it.” He put his arm around Will’s shoulders and pulled him gently up against him. “I’m never around when you need me.”

“Everything is all right, Brown,” said Will quietly. “I’m coping, just like I always do.”

Matthew snatched his arm back and made a sweeping gesture in the air, as if he were slicing through it. “But you shouldn’t have to! You are remarkable, Mr Graham, and I am tired of watching you try to eke out a survival, existing off your father’s savings and rotting your gut with moonshine––it’s not living, Mr Graham, it is nothing more than a staggered death.”

Will’s head felt suddenly heavy and he let it flop into his hands. “What would you have me do, hmm? I am _trying_ , Lord knows I’m trying.”

“I told you what you needed was revenge, Mr Graham, and I stand by that.” Matthew suddenly leapt up and drew the curtain across the window. “No more rain, Will. Please. I’d do anything for you, you know that.”

Will took a deep breath. He folded his arms across his chest so that his trembling knuckles were concealed beneath his sleeves. “Would you cast out the Devil?”

Matthew cocked his head to one side, before dropping into a crouch at Will’s feet and taking the boy’s hands in his. The touch was warm and it made Will feel like something living. “Anything.”

“Would you exorcise Doctor Lecter from me?” Will whispered. He leaned down until their faces were almost level and he could feel the other man’s breath, rapid and hot, on his chin.

At that Matthew reached up and, tangling his fingers in Will’s hair, pulled him down into a kiss. His lips were chapped from the wind and cold, but his mouth was deep and balmy, and Will found himself delighting in the sudden sweetness on his tongue. He found himself inclined towards the scheme his mind that hissed to him, serpentine in Eden.

“They say that’s how you seal a contract when you sell your soul,” Matthew said, breaking away as suddenly as he had instigated it. He stroked Will’s jaw with his thumb. “Though I intend to get yours back.”

Will squeezed his eyes shut to dam up the tears as he let Matthew kiss him again, softly this time, and against his red and swollen lips Will murmured, “Would you… would you kill Hannibal Lecter?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's rather a bit longer than usual, since I've only just got back from my adventures by the sea, and I had so much more to write.
> 
> Thank you for all the kudos in my absence! Check out flurgburgler.tumblr.com for updates and artwork.


	9. A Trip to The Country

**1928**

 

Something tapped at the door. It roused Will from a nap he had not been aware he’d been taking. The tapping came again, this time faster. It sounded as if something was going at the inside of his skull with a pickaxe.

Will wrinkled his nose and opened his eyes properly. From where he lay curled up on the couch, he could see Matthew crouched over the floorboards by the window, slowly levering out the nails with the back of a hammer.

“Are you making that noise?” Will asked, weariness weighing down his tongue like wine.

Matthew kept his eyes on his work. “That’ll be the door. You’re not expecting Crawford, are you?”

“No, he came for the money earlier.”

Matthew grinned, but still didn’t look up. “Then would you be a doll and get it for me?”

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the back of his hand, Will yawned his way over to the door. “Hell, it’s nearly eleven. Nothing good comes of answering the door at eleven. I mean, what kind of person is––?”

“Well, you sure took your time,” said Freddie Lounds, squeezing her way through the gap Will had opened. She shook out her wet umbrella, and the winter night cold of the water speckling Will’s face slapped him awake.

“Miss Lounds? What are you doing here? Our next appointment isn’t until Saturday.”

Freddie shrugged out of her coat and tossed it over the back of the armchair. Will noted the way the fur trim had gone bald in some patches.

“Well, Mr Brown,” she said, marching over the where Matthew squatted. “I got the information you wanted.”

He had loosened the floorboards now, and reached in to retrieve a small crate of unmarked bottles. “You’re an angel, Freddie.”

“Damn right. I could have lost my job pissing off the clerk at the public records house like that. What have you got for me in return?”

Bowing his head, Matthew offered up the crate to her. “The choice is yours, oh divine lady.”

Freddie’s rouged lips twisted like a cut on her face, but she selected a cloudy green bottle and stowed it away in her purse.

“What information is this, Brown?” Will asked, standing over Matthew as he produced another crate.

Matthew smiled at him as he replaced the floorboards. “I thought it’d be good for us to get out––or good for you, rather.”

Will sucked on his bottom lip. “I don’t need to get out, Brown. I’m fine.”

Matthew lined up the hammer with the head of the nail. “I’m going up to the country for a couple of days. Got myself a job delivering these.” He eyed the crates. “You’re going to come with me, and you’re going to wear something dandy and have a good time.” He brought the hammer down onto the nail as if he were sentencing it. Will knew the verdict all too well.

“Can we talked about this later?” he said.

Freddie sat herself down on the arm of the couch and hooked one talon of a leg over the other. “What are you boys up to, hmm?”

“That’s none of your concern, Miss Lounds,” said Matthew.

She ignored him, folding her arms and leaning forwards in Will’s direction. “I saw Jack Crawford leaving here earlier. What’s that all about, Mr Graham?”

“Have you been watching my apartment?” Will ran a hand through his hair, missing the way it used to curl around his fingers like it was glad to see them again.

“Don’t you go keeping anything from me, Mr Graham,” Freddie said, getting up and fidgeting back into her coat. “I could make things very difficult for you if you don’t cooperate with me.”

“Yeah,” Will muttered, as she slammed the door on her way out. He heard her high heels clicking on the landing like an itch. “I’ve heard that before.”

 

* * *

 

**1922**

 

In the few lucid moments between each attack of fever, Will remembered Chilton’s voice. He was asked about the murders–– _why did you eat that poor girl’s lungs, Mr Graham?_ ––and he would wretch out his innocence until he started to choke on it. One time Chilton was sick himself. Eventually he said he would speak with Will once the therapy was complete.

He could feel the weight of his own body as if it were crushing him. The oily film of sweat over his face made him flinch with disgust whenever he tried to rub his eyes or scratch his nose. It ached to swallow, though he was only ever given water. Sometimes he felt a need to empty out his stomach, but there was nothing in there, and he merely spat out his own bile.

His muscles existed in dull, tired agony. Disinterested agony. He gave up wanting to be hurt, or to be cured, he simply yearned for the fever, shroud-like, to cover him over again. With the fever came the reveries, and cruel though they were, they numbed the pain of everything else.

_There was sunlight, and there was warmth––the kind Will could feel in his hair. He ran down the bank, the tall grasses and the daisies kissing his ankles as he went, his legs moving faster than he could account for. He felt nauseous but he could not fold up the smile on his face._

_“Don’t go too far, William,” Hannibal called._

_Will tripped to a halt and turned to wave at him up at the top of the slope. He cut a fine figure in his white linen suit, brilliant against the blue sorbet of the midday sky. He fanned himself gently with his straw boater hat, as he made his way down the embankment towards the boy._

_“See, William,” he said when he reached him. “Now I am out of breath.”_

_Will laughed and threw his arms around him, kissing his cheek all over. “This place is wonderful,” he whispered against Hannibal’s neck._

_“I have always appreciated the solitude here,” Hannibal explained, as he placed Will’s hand on his arm and guided him the rest of the way down the slope. “I find it to be more of a habitat than a retreat.”_

_“Away from interfering eyes.”_

_“Indeed. I hope that one day the world will be disgusted with itself, rather than with the innocent individuals it locks away and spits upon because of their romantic inclinations.”_

_They had reached the foot of the embankment, and before them a great green field stretched out, swelling and dipping as if it were a frieze of a breathing body. Trees, their leaves puffed out like owl plumage, escorted the fence line, and the fat white clouds hung so low in the sky it seemed as if those arboreal appendages could scrape at their underbellies as they drifted by. The air was fecund with the heady scent of pollen, like honey in the brain. It made Will sneeze, and as Hannibal offered him his handkerchief, he said,_

_“You’re not innocent though, are you, Doctor Lecter?”_

_Hannibal slowly raised his eyebrows. “How so, little prince?”_

_“You’ve murdered people in front of me.” Will felt his breath stutter as his heart rate quickened. “And I know what you do with the bodies.”_

_Hannibal turned to face him and put both hands either side of Will’s face. “I kill only those who lack fair comportment, little prince––you know that.” His touch crept down to Will’s jaw line. “And even if I had never once explained it to you, you would still know. You empathise, dear William. You understand.”_

_Will stopped breathing when he realised Hannibal’s hands had closed lightly around his throat. “I… I know what you do with the bodies,” he murmured._

_Hannibal smiled. “And what do I do with the bodies?”_

_Will shut his eyes. A golden pendulum swung behind his eyelids, and he recalled luncheon as if he were back there again––the way the meat tasted, golden in his saliva-sweet mouth, yet unlike anything he had ever known before; the way Hannibal had insisted on preparing it himself, dismissing the other kitchen staff; the way he watched Will take every bite, the bob of Will’s throat at every swallow, his eyes glazed with memory._

_“You eat them,” he whispered._

 

* * *

 

**1928**

 

Snow buried the Maryland countryside. The road was but a black arm reaching through the skeletal white forest, and they followed its gesture in silence, for Will had always loved to hear the lack of storm in the falling snow. Rain always came down in Baltimore like fists on metal, but snow retained the magnificence whilst shutting out the sound altogether––like cloth falling from angelic gowns. The day seemed darker than its appointed time, for the grey clouds filled the sky like a fierce crowd, and there was no space for sunlight to creep through.

They only spoke when the little car rolled to halt at a fork in the road.

“Are we here to make another deal with the Devil?” Will asked. He tried to smile at Matthew, but it he was tensing up too hard to keep from shivering. Even with his father’s old navy jumper and his own greatcoat, the cold still found a way to slip its blue fingers up against his skin.

Matthew let out a long breath, which lingered, hot and white, in the air. “I didn’t just bring you up here for a job.”

“No, I figured,” said Will, crossing up his legs.

Matthew watched him and then spat out a laugh. “Jesus, Graham, you ain’t no rent boy.” He shook his head and smiled, but his brow was furrowed as if it hurt to make the expression at all. “You’re my friend, Will. I made you a deal, and I’ll stick by that, but you’ve got to help me out, you understand?”

Will frowned. “Not really.”

"It's why I needed Freddie's intel." Sighing, Matthew jerked his thumb in the direction of the right fork. “About half a mile up that road you’ll come to a drive way. It leads up to a house. I need you to look around, scout the place out––tell me how many entrances there are, what the locks are like, is there a dog on guard, that kind of thing.”

“Brown, you know I don’t mind you keeping your liquor under my floorboards, but I have to draw the line at snooping on other people’s property like that.”

“Work with me here, Graham, I know you used to do it for Lecter.”

Will twitched. He dug his fingers into the leather of the car seat, praying that it would stop him taking a swing at Matthew. “I don’t want any part of your bootlegging, Brown.”

“Hey, hey, it’s got nothing to do with that.” Matthew let his shoulders sag, and then he turned to gaze out of the window. “I don’t want you to get hurt, but I’ll get us both into trouble if I’m late with this delivery––the kind of trouble you don’t get back up from. I don’t want that for you. I made you a promise, and I’m damn well going to keep it. I’m going to kill Hannibal Lecter for you, Will, but you’re going to have to tell me about his house first.”

Will’s arms went rigid. His breathing slowed way down, until he could feel it dragging on the seconds as they ticked by with each swing of the pendulum in his head. “Up that road there…” He stared at the right fork until his eyes stung. “Up that road there is––is _Doctor Lecter’s_ house?”

Matthew reached over and gripped Will’s hand in his. “There’s an umbrella in the trunk. You’ll be all right, Graham.” He pulled back his hand and rested it on the steering wheel. “I’ve got to go.”

Will stepped out into the wilderness, snow rushing to coat his hair and shoulders as he dashed round to fetch the umbrella from the back. He watched Matthew’s car roll away until it was a fleck of dirt on the starched blouse of the forest, and then in was lost from sight at all. He took a deep breath, and, accompanied by the crunch of snow like bones under his boots, he began to trudge up the road.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait between chapters this time, I've been so busy moving into my new house. I've already written most of Chapter 10 now though, so that should be posted soon.
> 
> Thank you again for all the kudos and comments! Check out flurgburgler.tumblr.com for artwork and updates.


	10. The Encounter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the ridiculous delay with this chapter!
> 
> As those of you who saw my tumblr last week will know, I haven't been able to use my laptop at all until very recently, so it's taken a lot longer than I intended to get this chapter finished and posted. The laptop's all sorted now, though, so it shouldn't take anywhere near as much time in future.
> 
> As always, thank you for the all the comments and kudos, and particularly for your patience with this one. You're all fab.
> 
> Check out flurgburgler.tumblr.com for updates and artwork.

**1928**

 

By the time he reached the house, the red tips of Will’s fingers were so cold they almost felt warm. He blew on his hands, and stamped his feet to get the feeling back in his toes. The dwelling ahead of him was vast, it’s clapboards painted white like sun-bleached bones, and its dark windows and rooftop like hollows in a sunken face. A wooden wind chime made its throaty calls from its perch on the sprawling veranda, though if it was a warning or a beckoning, Will could not tell.

He picked his way up to the house through a thin layer of snow, which bore other tracks besides his own, although the prints of fox paws and scrawls of bird feet were left with a greater air of confidence than he felt. There were no signs of human tread; if there had been any, they were covered over with the afternoon’s fresh snow.

Will felt a different kind of coldness ripple throughout his chest. If no one had gone out, then would he…would _he_ be in there?

He was only a few feet from the door. How easy it would be, he thought, to knock and put an end to all this misery and mystery himself. How simple, just to put his fist to the door and then to Doctor Lecter’s face––cut out Matthew altogether; there was no need for darling Matthew to go to prison for a crime that ought to be Will’s by right. He tried to convince himself that he would be doing it out of honour, to save his beloved friend from being strapped down and fried up in a murky prison backroom far away from the smell of gin and the gentle scratching of Will’s stubble against his cheek––but it was dishonest. It wasn’t real. He could feel the falseness of it all like something thick and tangible, cotton in his head.

No, it would only suit him better to kill Hannibal because he could give the act intimacy. Hannibal’s death deserved intimacy, their year of high romance in summer fields and wild abscondances from murder scenes that stank of copper, it all deserved more than the quick release and shout and end that bullets offered. Matthew did not love Hannibal. He had never loved him; he would not do it right, Will could see that now.

The snow seeped into the fabric of Will’s coat collar; the damp felt like a cold hand pushing his head down. _Enough––enough of this._ He was done with bowing and begging. He heard his feet crunching on the snow like applause underfoot as he approached the door. He raised his right hand, his knuckles scarlet with cold––although it could just as easily be blood, he thought. Foreshadowing.

And yet…

And yet Matthew had a fierce loathing that writhed in his gut like a nest of vipers. The asylum and the malaria and the cold hard floor had drained Will of his rage. He had only a quiet bitterness now, and lives should not be ended by that kind of coy resentment. No, Matthew had the head for it, even if the murder would lack heart.

Will let out a loud, shaky breath. He lowered his hand, but as he did so the door swung inwards, and he found himself looking upon a familiar face.

“My gosh,” said the girl, staring at him with her wide blue eyes. “You’re William Graham.”

Will opened his mouth, but the cold air rushed in and so he closed it again.

The girl blinked and glanced at her feet, tucking a thick black curl of her bobbed hair neatly behind her ear. “I recognise you from the newspapers.”

“Miss Hobbs?” He swallowed, but despite all the trepidation, he found the corners of his mouth pulling upwards like an impatient child at their mother’s sleeve. “I… You were in the papers too.”

“From when you killed my father.” She smiled, but her eyes darted across all the points on his face, as if she was trying to assess any potential threat. “Or didn’t.”

Another voice rang out then, clear as tintinnabulation from a fine silver bell, clear as spring water, and just as sweet. “Abigail, what have I told you about answering the door by yourself? Let the staff get it.”

Heralded by the crisp click of high heels on sleek varnished floorboards, a young woman appeared in the doorway. She too wore her dark hair cropped short, as was the fashion, but there was little else about her that reminded Will of the reckless flamboyance of the modern age. She was classically elegant, he thought, in her pale grey dress, which rippled like the reflection of the moon in water whenever she moved, and the string of pearls at her throat like fine white teeth. Still, Will did not fail to notice the mauve under her eyes and the crinkle in her brow like a perfect thumb print––something kept this woman up at night.

“Hello,” she said, putting her arm around Abigail Hobbs. “Can I help you?”

“Alana Bloom? It’s Graham, William Graham. We met once––at that charity auction in ’21, I think… I don’t suppose you remember.”

She smiled and nodded. “I remember.”

“What are you doing all the way out here? I wouldn’t have thought…” A flash of light snatched at his eye and held onto his gaze with tight, vicious claws until he saw the diamond on her finger, and his words got tangled up in his mouth.

Abigail’s eyes caught him too, and before Will had time to panic, she said quickly, “Have you come to see Hannibal?”

Will nodded. He wasn’t sure there were words at all for what he had been thinking.

“Then I’m afraid your timing couldn’t be worse, Mr Graham,” said Alana. “Doctor Lecter telephoned not half an hour ago to say he had been kept behind at his office. Something to do with a patient referral, he didn’t really explain.”

Will nodded again, although he didn’t really know why. He felt it served him better than anything he could possibly have to say.

“You can’t just send him back out into the snow,” chided Abigail, glancing at Will.

Alana cocked her head to the side and looked him up and down. “That was half an hour ago though, I suppose. I’m sure he won’t be much longer. You’re very welcome to wait inside, Mr Graham.”

She moved to walk back through the hallway, but Will stood starched in the snow of the doorstep. Abigail looked quickly at Alana’s silhouette as she disappeared through another door, and then reached out and took Will’s hand.

“Come on,” she whispered. “I don’t really think you killed my father, you know.”

She tugged at him loosely, until at last he found himself able to un-stick one foot from the ground and place it over the threshold.

“Come on,” Abigail kept saying, as she ushered him across the hall and through the same door Alana had used.

Here they entered a fine drawing room, with tall blue walls adorned with many illustrious works of art in modest frames. How like Hannibal, Will mused, as Abigail led him over to the couch; Doctor Lecter had always had a penchant for keeping the past in the present.

The upholstery was thick and almost waxy under his touch. Will hadn’t felt anything so rich since that night at the Verger estate. He wondered if that meant something, although fancy upholstery lacked a certain sense of poetry as a bookend for his time with Hannibal.

“You know, Mr Graham, that night at the charity auction,” Alana said. “I never asked if you were a patient of Doctor Lecter’s.”

Will nodded slightly. The corners of his lips ached, probably to tell him that he did not exercise his smile enough. “I was a friend––for my part.” He took a deep breath, although he hoped it was not too audible. “I haven’t seen him since I got out of…since I got out of prison. I thought I should stop by whilst I was in the neighbourhood. I didn’t want to seem rude.”

Alana returned the nod, fingering the engagement ring. Abigail sighed.

“Congratulations, by the way,” he said, tilting his head towards her hands.

She beamed, and her shoulders sank down more comfortably into the cushions. “Thank you.”

A bloom of pink swept over her cheeks, and it broke Will’s heart the way she kept almost breaking into peels of laughter. Happiness, when it relied on Hannibal, was too dangerous for someone who treated it with blushes. Happiness with Hannibal had to be fierce and loud as a gunshot.

“I’d always wondered about him, you know. We had met so many times, but said so very little. I admired his work greatly, and he says he admired my curiosity. He says I have quite the talent for psychiatry, and Abigail too. He’s good like that––he sees past everything else.”

“I know,” said Will quietly.

“But I had always wondered about him, and then quite by chance we met in Venice last year. It was a glorious, golden autumn. He had adopted Abigail by then, of course, and her being a debutante, we were invited to the most exceptional––”

“Pardon, did you just say he adopted Miss Hobbs?” It had taken Will a moment to struggle past Venice–– _Venice_ , damn him––but he couldn’t simply let this one slide.

“That’s right.” Alana smiled at Abigail. “It’s been four of five years now, hasn’t it? I suppose you really ought to call her Miss Lecter now, Mr Graham.”

She shrugged. “He can call me Abigail, if he likes.”

“That’s all right Miss H––Miss _Lecter_.” Will shot her a brief grin, although the shape of the word on his tongue felt like coming home, and that made his insides feel inky. “So do you _all_ live here?”

“Gosh, no,” said Alana, blushing again. She would not meet his eyes all of a sudden. “No, I have a house in town. I only call in on Abigail whilst Doctor Lecter’s at work. He doesn’t like for her to be alone, you see.”

“He likes us all to have dinner together,” Abigail added.

Will could smell the sickly pollen, or at least the memory of it, from the tall grass in those fields so many years ago. He could feel the warmth of palms pressed against his throat, and he saw Hannibal’s deep vermillion eyes watching his lips as he murmured: you eat them.

“I’d better be going,” Will said.

Abigail frowned. “Hannibal will home soon, I’m sure.”

“No, no. It’s all right. I have to be getting back to the road anyway, someone will be waiting for me.”

“That almost sounds ominous,” said Abigail, as she and Alana escorted him back across the hallway. “What do you do for a living, Mr Graham––are you a writer? Everyone’s a writer these days.”

“No.” Will gave a short laughed. “No, I suppose these days I’m just trying not to be anything.” It’s easier that way, he thought. It was easier for people like Abigail if he simply ceased to exist once the trial was over. “I used to work with boats though.”

“Like fishing boats?”

“This one’s becoming quite the fisherwoman,” Alana said.

Will smiled. “It’s a fine interest to have. You know,” he leaned in closer to Abigail, as if what he had to say was somehow secretive, “if you fancy yourself smart enough, the best time to drop your line is when there’s ice over the water.”

As she grinned and nodded so eagerly, he could feel his heart twitching the skin beneath his shirt as it pulsed hard. Suddenly he had a yearning to teach her ice fishing. He wanted it more than anything. It was all too cruel. She should have been his daughter too.

As he turned to go, perhaps it was that sense of quiet bitterness that stung him just enough to ask, “What are you having for dinner, Abigail?”

She glanced up at Alana, still smiling. “Hannibal said it would be a surprise.”


	11. The Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies again for the late posting. I've been moving into my new flat so I've been super busy, but I've got loads of free time now, so expect these to be much more frequent :) The next chapter is going to be from Hannibal's point of view, so that shall be rather fun to write.
> 
> Again, thanks for your patience and fab comments and kudos, and as always, do check out flurgburgler.tumblr.com for updates and artwork.

**1928**

 

Matthew had not been waiting at the fork in the road, and so Will had traipsed on into town through the mushy snow. Dusk stretched out the shadows like stockings as it prepared to put on the evening. The snow glowed peach, then lilac, and finally a somber blue as the sun sank beneath the skinned boughs of the trees.

It was a tumbleweed kind of town, Will thought, or at least, it would be in the summer. The rows of whitewashed buildings were spectral in the gloom, and the tread of wheels were mapped out in the icy grey slush that littered the roads. Will followed the thinner tracks to where the houses were fewer and the woods began to encroach on civilisation, and here he found Matthew’s car parked outside of a long low structure with many numbered doors that faced outwards onto a wide veranda.

A little way off stood a lone cabin. A light shone behind the misted panes of glass, and it was this that drew Will to it. He knocked twice before a rotund, bearded fellow answered him, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with a handkerchief.

“Can I help you, sir?” the man peered out of the door and glanced left and right.

“What is this place?” Will asked.

“The Froideveaux Motor Hotel, sir. Will you be checking in?”

Will looked back at the long strip of doors and porch. “It doesn’t look much like a hotel to me.”

“It’s a motor hotel, sir––or _motel_ , as they’re calling them these days. Rather fun, don’t you think? It’s a combination of the words, you see.”

Will frowned. “I see. Actually, I believe I’m already booked into a room. Does this ‘motel’ have a guest register? Will you check it for a Mr M. Brown?”

“Oh,” the man exclaimed, wringing the handkerchief in his hands, as they turned red with cold. “You must be the cousin. Go right ahead––he’s in Room No. 2.”

Cousins, Will thought, as he tramped over to the motel. The numbness in his feet was beginning to thaw, and now his toes ached as if they were being crushed under a mighty weight. ‘Cousins’ was too obvious a lie. It was a good thing on Matthew’s part that the clerk seemed naive enough to buy it.

“Who is it?” Matthew called when Will knocked.

“It’s Graham. Open the door, Brown, I’m frozen out here.”

“Damn,” said Matthew, ushering him into the warm yellow light of the small motel room. “You were gone for hours. I was starting to worry you’d been caught and eaten.”

“Don’t joke about it.” Will narrowed his eyes, sitting down on the end of one of the single beds, and then began peeling the icy laces off his boots. “Doctor Lecter wasn’t home.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Matthew flopped down on the bed beside him. “What’s put you in such a sour mood? You weren’t hoping to see him––were you?”

Will sighed, and the balmy air of the room settled around his shoulders like a comforting arm. “He wasn’t home. His fiancée was.”

“Oh.” Matthew shuffled up onto his knees and patted Will gently on the back. “I’m sorry. Still, he’s engaged––to an actual woman? What, does she look like a pot roast or something?”

Will shook his head. “It’s Alana Bloom: belle of the ball, queen of the high society, smartest woman I’ve ever met.” He lay back and let Matthew cradle his head in his lap. “Even if I’d never gone to prison, he’d surely have chosen her over me.”

“Come on now, Graham, don’t be like that. Jealousy’s not attractive on you.”

Will screwed up his nose. Matthew’s attentions were the last thing he was in the mood for. “You were too obvious.”

“Excuse me?”

“With the clerk, you were too obvious. You told him we were cousins––I mean, everyone uses that one. He’ll figure it out.”

“What, that trembling idiot in the cabin?” laughed Matthew. “I very much doubt it. You worry too much.”

Will sat up, glaring at him. “You don’t worry enough. If he catches onto us he’ll get the authorities involved.”

“So? They can’t prove anything. Men have shared rooms before, you know.”

“But if they find out we’re not related then we’ll be in serious trouble. Why can’t you take this seriously? If they start investigating you they could learn about your bootlegging! Is that what you want?”

“Jesus, Graham, calm down.” Matthew shook his head and climbed off the bed. “We’ll only be here for another day or two, it’ll be fine. And, you know, things will go a lot faster if you give me the details of the house.”

“It’s not the same now!”

“Oh, why, because of pretty little Miss Bloom? You don’t want me getting blood on her petticoats?”

“Damn you, Brown.” Will stalked over to the door. “There’s a child, and she’s been through enough.”

Matthew put his hands on his hips. “I thought you wanted Hannibal Lecter dead. I’m just doing what you told me––what you told me when you kissed me, if you’ll recall. Doesn’t any of that matter to you anymore?”

“I don’t have time for this right now.” Will bent down to tighten his sodden laces again. “Of course I still want him dead, the man ruined my life. We just need to figure out another way.”

“Oh, are you going out now?” Matthew sneered. “You know what? Sure. Leave. Go and do all the figuring out you want. Go and figure him right out of his clothes and into bed, why don’t you?”

“Shut your mouth, Brown.” It was only when he slammed the door behind him that Will realised his cheeks were burning.

 

* * *

 

**1922**

 

Burning. He was burning up.

Every motion flooded him with nausea.

Hunger groaned in his gut, and yet the thought of chewing and swallowing made him wretch.

Will clung to the island of the memories of Hannibal that he had gathered, as the fever waded into the quiet of his mind and set it on fire.

 

* * *

 

**1921**

 

Flames snapped in the grate, and Will adjusted his stance so that the blaze warmed the backs of his legs. It had been a long drive from Wolf Trap, and his knees were stiff from winter and fatigue.

A young woman was making her way towards him. Her red dress was the only real pigment in the hall amongst the black and white of suits and gowns, and the hem skimmed her ankles daringly as she slid through the crowd like they were no more than tree branches that she might simply bat away. She wore her dark hair tied up in a tight bun behind her head, as so many of the society ladies were beginning to these days, and had laced it with smiles of pearls.

“You’re perspiring,” she said softly, as she came to stand beside him. “That could be a sign of anxiety. And you keep fiddling with your shirt collar.”

“Do I?” Will muttered, although he frowned as he realised that he was straining to keep his hand in his pocket away from his throat.

“Are you anxious?”

Will looked down at the tuxedo Hannibal had dressed him in. A tuxedo––lord, if his father could see him now. “I’ve never liked the feeling of wearing money.”

The woman nodded, slipping him a brief smile like it was some sort of pill. “You’re an intriguing little creature––why don’t I know you?”

Because nobody does, Will so desperately wanted to say; because I came from nothing, and I am only something to these people because tonight I may as well be garbed in dollar bills; because I am the expensive pet of one of your coterie’s most distinguished. Will had an urge to spill secrets like a spider crawling across his lips, but the sight of Hannibal saved him.

The doctor sliced through the partygoers as if cutting out an aisle for himself, and Will thought that the guests on either side would do well to fall to their knees; Doctor Lecter was the sort of man the world could not help but bow to.

“Ah, William,” he said, his accent purring a little from the wine they had shared in secret in the back of the car. “I see you have met our gracious hostess.”

They had only drunk the wine after making love. For a moment, Will could concentrate on nothing else other than the memory of it, cramped and sweaty and delicious. His knees felt soft and useless as he recalled the way Hannibal threw his head back, hissing Will’s name into the cold black air of the car. Doctor may well have been the kind of man one bowed to, but what better way to admire a king than when his crown lies in pieces on the floor? Will scarcely even noticed the way the young woman raised her eyebrows when Hannibal addressed him in such a familiar fashion.

“Miss Bloom,” the doctor continued. “This is Mr William Graham. I’ll wager you shall never meet a fellow with a mind like his.” The corners of his mouth twitched upwards. “William, this is Miss Alana Bloom. This charity auction tonight is all her doing. I tell you, prohibition being what it is, none of us would have anything to do if she didn’t make such fine entertainment for us.”

Alana Bloom laughed. “Doctor Lecter exaggerates. I just do what I can. We may not be able to sip wine, but that should hardly stop us from having a grand time––speaking of which, is that Margot Verger I see just arriving? Do excuse me.” As she walked away, she glanced back at Hannibal and offered him that pill of a smile.

It was a different kind of fire Will felt then, but it burnt him all the same.

 

* * *

 

**1928**

 

“Fire! Fire!”

Will had been wandering in the woods when he heard the cry. His first thoughts were of Matthew and their room––all that liquor, what if Matthew was yet to sell it on? It would burn the whole place to the ground if it caught alight.

He tore back through the trees, ignoring the burn of the blisters on his heels as his feet hit the ground again and again, but the only light to be found at the motel was that of the doors flung open by agitated guests. They milled about on the veranda, most clad only in their nightwear, squawking at one another, or at Mr Froideveaux, who kept stuttering out the same information that he had indeed dispatched someone to run for the fire brigade, and he had telegraphed as well––“just to be on the safe side.”

Where the sky met the line of jagged, bare branches, it looked like a great dragon had opened up its cruel mouth, and heat haze and flame could be glimpsed within, shimmering golden on the very seams of the horizon. Red and orange raged against the smoke-bleached sky. It must have been a few miles off at least behind the trees, but the sound of glass smashing echoed all around like so many screams.

Will scampered into the room, but Matthew was nowhere to be seen. After a brief inspection, dodging flailing guests who were terrified of being burnt alive in their beds, he concluded that Matthew was no longer on the property. He hoped he was all right.

It was then that he noticed Froideveaux lurking just behind the open door of his cabin. He kept glancing around, and when Will approached, he squinted at him so that his eyes seemed very tiny and his face became altogether terribly pig-like.

“Are you hiding from the others?” Will asked.

The poor man sighed and shook his head. “I’ve done my best to contact the authorities, what else can I do?”

“I suspect everyone just wants to be reassured that the same won’t happen to them here.”

“Oh I doubt it,” said Froideveaux. “The only real place out that way is the doctor’s house, and the trees are too damp for it to spread.”

“What?” The palms of his hands were suddenly slick with cold sweat, and he could feel his pounding heartbeat all the way down in his fingertips, as if it was something he could touch.

“That fire’s got to be burning the doctor’s place,” Froideveaux replied.

"Damn it man––which doctor?" demanded Will.

“Why, Doctor Hannibal Lecter, of course.”


	12. Hannibal In Venice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal's point of view this time. I don't think I really characterise him that well, but I'm working on it. I'm not sure how I feel about the end of this one, but originally it was part of a much larger chapter that I've split in half, so I shall probably post the rest of his POV later this evening when I've brushed it up.
> 
> As always, thank you for all the comments and kudos, and don't forget to check out flurgburgler.tumblr.com for updates and artwork.

Chapter XII

**1923**

 

“Thank you, Barney. Please keep me informed.”

Hannibal hung up the telephone. For a long while he did not move, simply stood listening to the wails of the seagulls reverberating through the narrow gondola waterways, and the clap of a single set of footsteps in the golden piazza below the window.

The zenith of the sun left no shaded nook, save for the bright canopies that sprouted up all over the city balconies every siesta like fungi, although they too offered little reprieve from the raging fist of the heat. It stung his eyes and the pads of his fingers whenever he strayed beyond the motherly cool of the villa, but it had not stopped Abigail venturing out that afternoon.

That was her returning now, her footsteps resounding on the steps as she tapped up to the arches of the great white villa. She flew into the room, her cheeks pink and her forehead glossy with perspiration, as her sheer silk shawl trailed behind her like wings.

“Have you been up here all morning?” she asked, reaching for the paper fan hanging by the nearest well-populated bookshelf.

Hannibal did not reply.

Abigail beat the thick air severely, perhaps hoping to drive the warmth from it. “Is everything all right?”

“Were you without a chaperone?” he said at last, still unmoving from his spot by the window.

She frowned and let out a loud growl of a breath. “I only went to the market. I don’t think need to be chaperoned for that.”

“Nevertheless, Abigail, I would prefer that you didn’t wander the city alone in future. Will you promise me not to do so whilst I am gone?”

“Gone?” She flopped down on a futon, raking back black tendrils of her bobbed hair that had stuck to her brow with sweat. “Where are you going?”

Hannibal turned away from the window then, letting the cool of the study brush its fingertips across his cheekbones. “I have to return to Baltimore. I cannot say how long for, but I must not delay. I shall depart this afternoon.”

Abigail’s lip curled. “Did you get another telegram from Barney?”

Hannibal went over to the bureau and began searching for his passport. “It was a telephone call. The situation is urgent.”

“What’s happened?”

She was always such a suspicious girl, he thought. He had long appreciated her bitter wariness, like some sort of beast in captivity––perhaps that was why he had been so drawn to her. He had had a desire to tame that creature to his own ends, but now… now the protean nature of his curiosity was catching up with him. Plans would have to be remade.

“Chilton’s been giving William a course of fever therapy.” He spoke the words quickly, for he had no wish to linger on the images that flew to mind as they spilled from his mouth. Poor Will––poor foolish, naïve little prince.

Abigail sighed. “That doesn’t sound good. That doesn’t sound good at all.”

“Chilton is a second-rate psychiatrist at best, and he is most certainly lacking in any medical expertise. I won’t leave William to be martyred in that hospital for the sake of Frederick Chilton’s vanity.”

“Hey,” Abigail snapped, sitting bolt upright and throwing down the fan. “You’re not leaving me here. You’re not leaving me alone in Venice just to run back to your precious William––who, might I add, you put there in the first place!”

Hannibal lips etched out a thin smile. “You won’t be alone. Alana Bloom is still here, I shall make arrangements for you to stay with her until I send for you.”

“It’s not going to work, Hannibal,” she scolded. “You’ve let it go too far. Will Graham won’t take you back now, and even if he does, he won’t be what you want when–– _if_ ––you get him out of there.”

Hannibal retrieved a large suitcase from the top of one of the bookshelves. All he had here were summer suits. He would have to find something more agreeable to the Baltimore climate, for it would not do to look ill equipped in front of Will.

“That is why I must leave as soon as possible,” he said.

Incarceration was meant to be no more than an incubation period. He had believed Will to be strong enough to withstand it, to form his own intrepid chrysalis, so that when Hannibal had sufficiently covered his tracks and perfected their savage daughter, he could lead the police along another trail, and Will would be allowed to emerge. Perhaps he would be Hannibal’s creature, or maybe he would be something else entirely. At least Hannibal would have had the thrill of discovering that for himself, but now Chilton threatened to ruin it all, to tear down the chrysalis and burn all of Hannibal’s good work away.

He had to be stopped, and the remnants of Will had to be saved. Hannibal realised now that it no longer mattered what shades of Will had run together like paint in the rain, so long as some shred of that remarkable boy still remained.

He recalled the first time he saw him. Late spring––yes, that had been it, for the air had been sodden with petrichor––and Will was standing at the quayside, dragging on a cigarette in the soft morning light. He had hawk’s feathers for hair, set harshly against his milky skin like keys on a harpsichord, and he wore a crisp white shirt, unbuttoned at the top, with suspenders and black slacks that still managed to follow the contours of his legs so fetchingly. Hannibal remembered every fold in the fabric, every tendril of smoke that wafted out from between the boy’s lips. Will was a gilded icon in the cathedral of his memory palace; every speck of him was far too sacred to be forgotten.

“Hannibal,” said Abigail quietly, leaving the futon and coming to embrace him. They held each other so tightly that he could feel their pulses as if they were within one another’s veins.

“I must go, child,” he whispered.

She hugged him closer. “You took one father from me already––will you take yourself away now too?”

He ran a hand through her hair, feeling the moisture from the heat. It might have repulsed him before, but perhaps he liked the savagery of her. She was an amalgamation of both Will and himself––so human and brittle, and yet so fierce.

“I shall send for you, Abigail. You have my word.”

They were beginning to sweat, being pressed so close together, and so he was almost relieved when she pulled away from him, eyes narrowed. “What do you even hope to achieve by going back? You won’t make William feel any better, and if you truly love him as much as you’ve professed to then it’ll only hurt you to see him invalided.”

Hannibal wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. Will was _his_ , and Frederick Chilton had no claim on him, no right to break him like this.

“I like Will Graham,” Abigail said. “From what you tell me of him, from what I saw in the papers––he seems sweet, and good. He seems better than all of this. Free him if you must, Hannibal, but please promise me that you will cut all ties with him once he is out.” She sat back down and put her head in her hands. “No more secrets and half-truths. Make us a real family. I miss my mother, Hannibal, and you cannot be that for me. Marry Alana, for Heaven’s sake, I know you care for her, and she loves you. It will be better for all of us––it will be better for Will.”

Hannibal walked back over to the window. The air had lost its fire now, and cool breeze swept in from the sea, rippling the canals and chasing the dust from the piazza. It pawed at his shirt and carded its fingers through his hair, and he let his eyes sink shut as he leaned ever so slightly into its touch.

Maybe Abigail had the truth of it. She was his creation too, after all, and he could not abandon her mid-way through the process. He owed her self-sufficiency, and he owed Will… Oh, he owed dear William so much more.

“I will free Will Graham,” he said, keeping his eyes on the greying Venetian cityscape. It would be a tiresome task from if he had to operate from Europe, but he supposed he owed the poor, silly boy that much as well. And of course he could see it done. It was a small matter of putting money into the right hands and knives into the right throats, and filling as many ears with flattery, and gullets with fine cuisine, as was necessary between Venice and Baltimore. It was nothing he could not succeed at, or enjoy succeeding at. “I will free Will Graham,” he said again, looping his arm around Abigail as she came to stand beside him. “And then I will set him free.”


	13. Hannibal In Maryland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second half of Hannibal's POV.
> 
> Check out flurgburgler.tumblr.com for updates and artwork.

**1928**

Swift kisses on cheeks and foreheads had said his goodbyes and goodnights to Alana and Abigail respectively. After the news she had greeted him with so ardently, Hannibal had not wanted his fiancée to linger for too long after desert.

Will had been there, in the house. He had placed his feet on the tiles and boards and rugs, and he had sat on the couch. The very breath with which he had spoken words that had touched his tongue still circulated in the air that Hannibal inhaled. He wanted to be alone with these traces of his William, to embrace and placate them, as he would the real, tangible thing.

He was standing in the kitchen, clearing away the remains of dinner––for it seemed that no one save for Alana had had much of an appetite that evening––and that was when the fire started. All at once the air reeked of petrol and gin, and long flaming tongues were suddenly licking at the windowpanes.

Glass shards rattled as they smashed in the hallway, but by the time Hannibal had made his way there, it too was alight. The door stood wide open, as if the house was gasping for oxygen. It would have been so easy just to flee, and he could not deny that some part of him yearned to, to let all of this burn away and start afresh––but in his head he felt the wrathful heat of enemy incendiaries, and the sweat between his skin and the leather gas mask clinging to his head as he waded through knee-high mud in a foreign trench. All he could see was Mischa, and face that wasn’t even there in whole anymore. No, he could not run; he had to do better by Abigail, she was his charge now.

Hannibal took the stairs two, three at a time, calling for her with every breath that he could spare. The fire had taken the lower floor of the house, but upstairs the smoke was thick grey fingers crawling down his gullet, making him wheeze the faster he moved, and leaving a bloody taste where the flesh was driest.

“Abigail!”

There was no reply, and when at last he reached her room he found it empty. He spied a trail of damp patches leading away from her bed. They were recent enough not to have been evaporated by the heat, and so he followed them, racing down the stairs as they led him. He carried on calling for Abigail, but only the snapping of flames answered him.

He stumbled outside, gulping down the fresh air that bit the back of his throat with its cold teeth. He tried to stand upright, but his head felt too light, and yet at the same time too heavy for his shoulders. Glancing back, he watched as great plumes of smoke like sable scarves wound their way into the crepuscular sky, whilst fluffy grey and white counterparts billowed from the gaping pane-less windows, like obscenities from human mouths. The combination of the flames and the smog created the appearance of lugubrious, slovenly forms dripping from the roof and creeping down the side of the house, leaving an adumbral trail of soot behind them.

The air was like hands around his neck, too thick to breath comfortably, and as he coughed and tripped away from the inferno, he saw a pale face emerge from the gloom before him.

“My daughter,” he spluttered. “Help me find my daughter.”

The face nodded slowly, a smile tightening on its thin lips, and in an unfamiliar Boston drawl it said, “It’s all right, I got her out. She’s not hurt––but she’s not your daughter, is she, Doctor Lecter?”

Hannibal staggered towards him, but halted sharply at the sound of a revolver clicking into function.

“She’s not hurt, Doctor Lecter, but you come any closer and I’ll shoot her.”

“She’s just a child,” said Hannibal, although the stranger seemed scarcely older than her himself. He looked about Will’s age, perhaps, but he was taller and broader and his cloth was poor, unlike the fine garments Hannibal had dressed his boy in.

The young man looked down at his feet where Abigail lay motionless, her tangled black hair covering her face like a shroud. “She’s the Hobbs girl, isn’t she?” he said.

“She is my daughter,” Hannibal repeated. “If you want me then that’s another matter, but you must let her go.”

The young man shrugged. “The way I hear it, she’s been living on borrowed time anyway.”

Hannibal took a step forwards, but the dull flash of the gun muzzle in the firelight stopped him going any further.

“What did I tell you, Doctor? You stay where you are.”

“I don’t know you,” said Hannibal, straining his eyes to make him out in the dark. “Is there something you want from me?”

“You’re damn right there is. My name is Brown––Matthew Brown––and I have come for a reckoning.”

Hannibal rolled his shoulders back and tilted his head up. Even at a distance, he was taller than this Brown fellow. “You must be a friend of William’s.”

“You’ve no right to be so familiar with him.”

“I imagine I have more of a right than you do, Mr Brown.” Hannibal could tell the man was shaking because of the way the light danced on the metal of the revolver.

“You tore his life to pieces, Doctor Lecter, and I had enough liquor in my trunk to burn yours to the ground––I thought it only fair.”

Hannibal frowned. “So you think you can kill me and simply take my place––just become me? You’ll never be good enough for Will Graham.”

“Oh, and you are? You left him to rot in an asylum. He nearly died because of you––and hell, I know you’re a killer, but I figure that’s one death you wouldn’t want on your conscience.”

Hannibal coughed up a laugh. “You have no idea what I did for William.”

“No,” spat Brown. “No, don’t you give me that shit. I watched him for six years–– _six years_ he spent trying to get you out from under his skin. I know every twitch of his mouth when he’s not quite smiling, and the way you see all of his teeth when he really is. I know the way he’ll look anywhere but my face when he’s frightened, the way he tilts his head to one side when he listens to people speak. I know how he trembles and how he rubs his mouth and scratches his ear when he’s trying not to say something spiteful. I know every inch of him, Doctor Lecter, so don’t you dare be righteous with me.”

“I must congratulate you, Mr Brown, on your diligent cataloguing of William’s facial movements. But I wonder how much you could recount of that brilliant mind of his––or of any of his thoughts at all. You watched his so-called misery eat away at him for six years, and only now are you pointing a gun at me?” Hannibal shook his head, smiling. “No, Mr Brown, I’m afraid you do not know William at all. He loves fiercely and with resolution. You could pull that trigger and riddle me with lead, and that process alone would be the closest you could ever come to understanding the way that boy loves.”

Any retort Brown was about to make was cut short by the snarl of a car engine, and before the machine had even wholly come to a stop, Jack Crawford leapt out. The reflections of the flames made the car look as if it were on fire itself, and Hannibal admired the almost Biblical air that Crawford cast as he strode from the image of fire, pistol poised, and cried out,

“Damn it, Brown, put the gun down and step away from the girl.”

“You’re kidding me,” the young man groaned, his outstretched arm quivering. “You’re goddamn kidding me. Did Freddie Lounds put you up to this? She did, didn’t she?” He clawed his other hand through his dark oily hair, sighing loudly. “Damn that woman–– should have known not to trust a reporter.”

“Miss Lounds was concerned for the safety of Will Graham, yes, but I came of my own accord,” Crawford called over the hiss of the fire. “I won’t pretend it doesn’t give me a certain satisfaction to turn you over to the police after all the months I’ve watched you try to cover up that shifty business of yours. You’re a crook, Mr Brown, but I’ve got you now.”

Matthew jabbed the revolver in Hannibal’s direction. “He’s the criminal here, Crawford––what’s it going to take for you to see that?”

“Doctor Lecter’s not the one holding the gun.”

Perhaps it was the smoke, or the crippling heat, but squinting, Hannibal thought he could make out tears in the young man’s eyes.

Brown nodded, blinking furiously. “No, but you are, Crawford. And your blind ignorance makes you just as culpable as him.”

“Matthew!”

Brown’s neck jerked around as fast as if someone had snapped it, but Hannibal suddenly found himself unable to turn. He heard the car door slam shut, and footsteps thudding in the damp grass where the snow had melted under the glare of the blaze. He closed his eyes. After all this time, he could not look at him. He had made a promise to Abigail to set him free, and to look upon him would be to tie the leash around his throat all over again.

“Matthew, damn it, put the gun down!” Will cried. “Don’t be a fool…please…”

The sob in Will’s voice made Hannibal long to reach out into the darkness and touch him, but he only opened his eyes when gunshot cracked in his ears. He felt nothing, for it was not he who had taken the bullet. Will shrieked. He looked up. Blood was blossoming on Brown’s shirt, just visible where his jacket peeled back at the collarbone.

Jack Crawford had had his eyes open the whole time. “Give it up, Brown,” he called. “You’re not a killer. Step away from Miss Hobbs and take your weapon off of Doctor Lecter, and I’ll get you to a hospital.”

“Matthew…” Will mouthed. It struck Hannibal how changed the boy was. The fire and the moon picked out his unfamiliarly lean figure in silver and gold, illuminating the dusting of dark stubble across his jaw and upper lip, and the fleshy grey hollows into which his eyes had sunk. He no longer looked like a boy at all, really.

“I’m sorry, Will.” Brown’s arm thrust out, his finger squeezing on the trigger.

Hannibal heard Will cry “ _No!_ ” He saw something coming at him out of the corner of his eye. Gunshots came again, two in quick succession, ripping into the night. He felt a body slam against his, and the hard damp of the ground coming up to smack him in the spine as he fell back against the earth. He blinked, trying to stay focussed, watching as Matthew Brown collapsed into the watery snow with a quiet splash, a fine red rose blooming on his forehead.

“Graham!” Crawford yelled. “Damn it, Graham––are you all right?” He was kneeling beside Abigail, clutching her little white wrist. “Jesus Christ,” he groaned, slamming his gun down into the snow. “Doctor Lecter! I need you to send for an ambulance right away. These two need medical assistance urgently.”

For a moment Hannibal did not understand––that shot should have killed Brown––but a sudden twitching to his left caught his attention, and all thought of the young gunman left him.

“William,” he said. Horror ran over him like cold water as he put his hand to Will’s cheek and his fingers came away bloody. “William, can you hear me?”

If there were words on Will’s tongue, they only came out in hitched breaths and soft moans. Hannibal moved around until he was cradling Will’s head in his arms.

“Hush, little prince. I’ve got you now.”

Will’s eyes rolled back. Hannibal felt as if the whites were staring at him nonetheless, accusing on Will Graham’s behalf–– _all of this is your fault_.

“Stay with me, William, come on. Stay with me.”

A long, guttural sigh pushed Will’s lips apart. He sounded as if he were vomiting it.

“William…” Hannibal swept the hair from Will’s forehead. It was shorter than he remembered; he could no longer loop it around his fingers. “ _Stay with me_. Whatever possessed you to do something so foolish?”

Will’s eyelids flickered shut, but although the blood from his cheek was meandering thick and slovenly into the corner of his mouth, Hannibal did not fail to catch the words, “The…cigarette case…”

**Author's Note:**

> It's been forever since I last wrote fanfic, so thank you to everyone who offered patience and advice. You are all fab and shall not be eaten.  
> I'm not sure how long I want this to be yet, I shall just have to see where it takes me. My aim is to update it every couple of days. Sorry if the formatting's a bit gross, I shall figure it out and fix it!


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